^ 



V 



V 



/ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, t 

- — — # 

S UNITED STATKS OF AMERICA. * 

X'„ ^ _ _ _ _ _ # 



A VOTER'S VERSION 



OP THE 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 



STEPHEN AENOLD DOUGLAS. 



By ROBERT B. WARDEN. 



Wilde Stuerme, KriegesTvogen 
Ras'ten ueber Hain und Dach ; 
Ewig doch und allgemach 
Stellt sich her der bunte Bogen." 

. QOETttE. 



COLUMBUS: 

FOLLETT, FOSTER AND COMPANT 

1860. 




.T\ rf2 ^'\' 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the jear 1860, 

By ROBERT B. WARDEN, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 



District of Ohio. 



FOLLETT, FOSTER & CO., PRINTERS, STEREOTTPERS AND EINDEES, 
COLOMBUS, OHIO. 



INTRODUCTION. 



By a Voter's Version of the Life and Character of Douglas 
is intended here a history of that great statesman, drawn from 
all known sources of the truth, transforming into simple state- 
ment of the truth as apprehended much that is exti'avagant 
in other histories of Douglas, and dependent wholly on the 
vigor and beauty of the truth for its attractiveness. 

The writer has been urged to undertake this version, not by 
a committee, but by voters as such. "When the work was first 
suggested to him, he had seeming reasons for regarding it with 
strong repugnance. And he was not easily induced to under- 
take it. 

To appear before the public, with whatever careful explana- 
tion, as the author of a Life and Character of Douglas, is to 
risk the imputation of an undue eagerness to figure as a poli- 
tician. Reasons which the author need not here advance, 
make him especially desirous to avoid that imputation. 

But each voter, as such, has a duty to perform at present, 
of which few have had examples. The appi'oaching contest 
at the polls may be well described as an expected but a quite 
unprecedented trial of ideas, interests, and relations. Puerile 



4: INTRODUCTION. 

attempts to ridicule this notion will not hide fi-om thinking 
voters its entire agreement with the truth. In view of it, a 
voter who is thought to have it in his power to produce a ver- 
sion, such as that attempted in this volume, of the Life and 
Character of Douglas, is, perhaps, obliged to yield to such sug- 
gestions as were made, as already intimated, to the author. 

Having so determined, the writer began to collate the ac- 
counts of Douglas, with a view to the intended version. As 
he more and more became acquainted with the order of events 
already known to him, and added to his knowledge of the 
early life of Douglas, the bare sense of duty grew into a 
pleasure. Now, he freely owns, it is a matter of desire to 
trace the outlines of the Life and Character of Douglas. 

Prejudices marked the first acquaintance of the writer with 
the history of Douglas. Opposition to the " Little Giant " 
drew the author even into public prominence some years ago. 
And though, after that forever memorable and forever glorious 
twenty-second day of March, when Douglas faced the centu- 
ries with his self-vindication, prejudices fled from every dis- 
criminating mind, and he who writes this volume hastened 
with unnumbered others to acknowledge his correction, it was 
only in assembling the materials of this production that the 
writer began to take the true dimensions of the greatness 
embodied in the real life and character of Douglas. 

In that real life and character is such an illustration of or- 
derly developed strength, of constantly pursued design, of 
thoroughly elaborated great conceptions, as alone makes the 
historian proud in presence of his subject. Add to this, the 
exaltation won by an unfavored, young, and unimposing emi- 
grant to a new scene of action, and you have such a life and 



INTRODUCTION. O 

character to contemplate as any writer may be happy to 
describe for any purpose. In the simplest history of the 
career of Douglas, and the least idealized conception of his 
character, we seem to penetrate the region of romance. And 
though no steed caparisoned, no burnished armor, no chivalric 
gallantry of any kind, appear, in the historic reproduction of 
the life of Douglas, gallantry of a far higher order here enlists 
our admiration. 

But the reader must not fancy that the writer is in danger of 
forgetting his design to make a voter's — not a poet's — version 
of the Life of Douglas. While no stateliness of manner is in- 
tended, and while natui-al affection for the greatness manifested 
in the life and character of Douglas will be suffered its free 
play, this history shall constantly endeavor to support its title. 

I desire, and I intend, to lay before the public a true voter s 
version, as already defined, of the most interesting facts com- 
posing the career and indicating the proclivities of Douglas. 

Such a version ought to be acceptable to all who mean to 
take the least concern in the approaching contest at the polls. 
It ought to be acceptable at the South, because in its agree- 
ment with the real sentiment of Northern States it cannot be 
"incendiary." It ought to be acceptable at the North because 
in its whole scope and spirit it is indisposed to any sort of 
novel doctrine, touching slavery or any other interest. It 
ought to be acceptable in every division of the Union, since 
its principles are those on which the safeguards of the Union 
ever must depend. 

With reference, however, to certain very public, perma- 
nently uttered, unrecanted, and, perhaps, never-to-be retracted 
doctrines of tiie writer, it may be (locally) objected, that his 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

version of the Life and Character of Douglas will be biased, 
sectional, illiberal, unfit to be addressed to South and North 
alike. 

If objection such as this be hinted, answer may be found 
without offence to any, and yet with strict regard to truth. 

The writer, tiien, in answer to the supposition of the possi- 
ble objection, simply asks the Southern voter to examine all 
that follows ere deciding that this production is, by implication 
even, in fiinatical contempt of constitutional considerations. 
Rightly understood, the recoi'd of the writer — carefully made 
up with reference to slavery — is equally remote from the 
fanaticism of the North and the fanaticism of the South. To 
justify this sentence may, hereafter and elsewhere, become 
the duty of the author. For the present, he contents himself 
with simply stating, that he never has been touched with the 
incendiary quality of anti-slavery opinions ; adding, however, 
that even if the fact had been quite otherwise, he would now 
be ready to lay on the altar of the platform and the nomina- 
tion made at Baltimore by the true representatives of the 
National Democracy, the offering of justly reconsidered views, 
of liberally moderated feeling, of an honest purpose to re- 
nounce all mere extravagance of all descriptions. If, there- 
fore, from time to time as we proceed, the author fairly, freely, 
but respectfully remind our brethren of the ardent latitudes 
of things which they appear to have forgotten, and protest 
against their lately kindled scorn of things which all Ameri- 
cans should reverence, he will also testify, throughout, that the 
cotton flowers in the midst of noble virtues, and that the 
savanna and the prairie should be friends. While he discerns 
the evil of misunderstanding or of misbehavior at the South, 



INTRODUCTION. ij 

he will not overlook the evil of misunderstanding or of misbe- 
havior at the North. 

The rush, the ever-varying excitement, the quickly altering 
conditions of a Presidential Canvass, do not often favor the 
production of a work like that hei*e offered to the voters of the 
Union. 

But no Presidential Canvass, of whatever date, could ever 
be regarded as a simple imitation of the Presidential Canvass 
that preceded it. Our people, and their objects of concern, 
are incessantly passing into novel and, to some extent, quite 
unexpected conditions and relations. Even their opinions alter, 
necessarily, with greater frequency and greater quickness, as 
well as far more radically, than a superficial view of our re- 
publican experiment would be able to reconcile with rational 
stability of character in government or people. There is al- 
ways what may be distinguished, quite respectfully, as the un- 
fixed or floating vote, and there are always partisans unable 
longer to continue their support of the party theretofore pre- 
ferred by them. At present, many are in the just indicated case. 

And there are also at the present moment, quite uncounted, 
even quite undreamed of, by the politicians, men who will per- 
mit no precedent declaration of opinion or of preference, no ab- 
surd pretension to consistency, no sort of selfishness, to keep 
them from the ascertainment, or to shackle them in the per- 
formance, of their public duty in this year of grace and plenty. 
Thus, it seems quite evident, that whatever may be done by 
way of preparation for November, all the calculations of mere 
politicians will be mocked when preparation shall have ceased, 
and the inevitable " It is accomplished ! " shall reward the pa- 
triot or curse the plotter. Seek the most capricious of the winds, 



8 INTRODUCTION. , 

and you shall better calculate its courses than the changes 
which will end in blessing or in bale before the ides of March. 
The process of correction — self-cori'ection — may be quiet, or 
the progress of fanaticism may be frantic. Decades of mere 
days may witness the extinguishment and the revival of ijia 
prospects now apparently the best, or now apparently the worst. 

The considerations which I have presented seem to show 
that such a work as that here offered to the public, is not out 
of time. The declaration of one of our great men, that he 
had sworn upon the altar of his conscience, eternal hostility to 
every form of tyranny, is evidently applicable now to that 
self-tyranny, in which we sometimes mutilate the rights of con- 
science. No American is worthy of his rights to-day, if he 
permits himself to be a slave to that worst form of mental 
despotism, the pride of self-consistency. 

There may be places, where deliberately fixed opinions, pref- 
ei"ences, and associations, may be treated as unalterable. But 
in our America, all is experiment. We work out in our legis- 
lation, in our voting, in our public action of all kinds, the prop- 
ositions that appear to us as principles of policy. We often 
find that we have been mistaken. Then, there is no time to 
lose. A single vote may make amendment of the error. 
Though we hear no magic " Presto ! change ! " we quickly 
move in the direction indicated by our wish of betterment. 

However this may be in general, it must prove so at present. 
Here are interests inestimable exposed to peril. One ill-given 
vote may rend an empire. One ill-taken step may lead to 
ruin. One self-conquest may preserve the Union. 

Sneers at views like these will hardly show their fallacy. 
If they are really absurd, then all the hopes, wherever enter- 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

tained, of long-continued peace and union, are absurd. But 
no absurdity appears in them. Was it not true, as intimated 
on another page, that though not unexpected, the approaching 
presidential contest will prove quite unprecedented ? Who 
will play the prophet now ? Who ventures to predict the les- 
son of November ? 

" Here," it may be thought, " the writer is egregiously de- 
ceived. Although no man was ever really consistent, all men 
find it quite impossible to own that they were ever inconsistent. 
Even in the presence of the difficulties — poorly indicated by 
so tame a word — that now menace our beloved Union, few 
will act in such a manner as involves the evidence that they 
have ascertained erroneous tendencies in their previous polit- 
ical behavior, none will plainly own that they have errors to 
cori-ect." 

Such reasoning entirely overlooks the true distinction of the 
limes. For years, it has been difficult, notoriously difficult, for 
any thinking, earnest, honest man to hold position with his 
party, be that party what it may. In politics, in medicine, and 
in religion, he who has not differed with his party, by open 
quarrel or by secret question, during the last ten years, has 
not thought at all, or has had differences with his conscience. 
These things are well known. And now the times permit 
such alterations of opinion as are alluded to in a preceding 
paragraph, and only the light weapons of ignoble warfare can 
be tvu-ned against a man who honestly avows that he has been 
in error, and that he intends to show his love of Tightness by 
correcting his position. 

Certainly, this disposition may itself mislead. If the pres- 
ent occasion called for any thing not plainly pertinent to a re 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

liable account of Douglas, in his life and his opinions, the 
writer might, perhaps, admit that he himself has rather liber- 
ally used the right of differing with those who were in general 
his party. 

In a certain view, indeed, of the design which animates the 
author of this little volume, it may not be deemed impertinent 
to glance in passing at the author's personal experience, with 
reference to doubts, and difficulties, and mistaken judgments, 
in politics. 

The writer, then, is partly influenced to write this life of 
Douglas by the consideration, that he has with great publicity 
and not a little fervor, frequently denounced the hero of this 
history. Never satisfied with the provisions for the govern- 
ment of Kanzas, he is likely to continue in the notion that 
there was defect in those provisions. And he is not likely to 
become convinced that Stephen Arnold Douglas is to be ac- 
quitted of all blame, with reference to the unhappy four years, 
or nearly four years, following the passage of the Kanzas act, 
and preceding that redeeming day, when Douglas was himself 
again in presence of the Senate and the world. However 
this may be, the history of Douglas during those four years, 
connected as it seemed with the inaugurative anticipation by 
the President of the most unhappy dicta of the most unhappy 
judgment ever given in America — I mean the judgment in 
the Dred Scott case — induced the writer to believe, what, 
certainly, no honest mind can now pretend, that Douglas was 
an arch conspirator against the equal dignity, the equal inter- 
ests, the equal rights, of citizens, who while they were not 
abolitionists, preferred free territory, and demanded that the 
people of each Territory should be really at liberty to have 



INTRODUCTIOX. 11 

and to maintain a preference like theirs. It seemed to the 
writer that there was a general conspiracy, in which the Sen- 
ator from Illinois was secretly at work, to bring about the 
judgment in the case alluded to, and to support its dicta under 
false pretence of obligation to accept them. 

Nothing can be more entirely evident, than that the writer 
was mistaken as to Stephen Arnold Douglas. Nothing can 
or shall be more entirely hearty than the effort of the writer 
in this little volume to acknowledge, in becoming terms, the 
noble character of the self-restoration worked by that great 
statesman in the speech of March 22, 1858, and all that has 
succeeded it. 

At the same time, as intimated, it is quite impossible to 
acquit our hero of all blame, with reference to the facts, in 
which there seemed to be a basis for the writer's now evi- 
dently quite erroneous judgment of the motives and intentions 
of the Senator from Illinois. 

Indeed, among the reasons why it seems desirable to bring 
before the public such a history of the career and character of 
Douglas as the writer has attempted to produce, is the persua- 
sion that most writers will be more embarrassed than this 
author in describing the unhappy period alluded to. From 
1854 to 1858, the course of Douglas was imperfect, not merely 
as all human conduct is imperfect, but with reference to the 
entirety of which it was a part — in other words, with refer- 
ence to all that went before it, and to all that has succeeded it, 
in the life of Stephen Arnold Douglas. While, therefore, the 
writer might be ready, were it pertinent, to enlarge the ad- 
mission that alike in " bolting," as he bolted, and in the pecul- 
iar fervor of his bolting, he may not have been sufficiently 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

considerative of tlie rights of others, he is clearly of the opin- 
ion, that a, truly written history of Douglas will discern in the 
four years alluded to, the time of the eclipse of that great 
statesman. Glorious was the succession to that temporary 
hiding of his glory; but the fact of the eclipse ought not to be 
disputed, and in any veritable record it must be recorded. I 
will here record it. 

I propose, therefore, with the permission of the reader, to 
present a view of Douglas which, perhaps, could not be pre- 
sented by any one who has remained in constant and, as he 
would say, consistent harmony with the democratic party. I 
do not propose to trifle with the interests of Douglas — I do 
not propose to trifle with the real duty of a just historian — by 
lightly making this or that concession to the prejudices of the 
reader. Having ascertained the fair result of a true state- 
ment of the facts, I am prepared to make that statement and 
to offer that result to the intelligent appreciation of the public, 
as an ample tribute to the real greatness and the now unques- 
tionable merits of our hero. 

Part of the due preparation for the movements — nay, part 
of the movements themselves — which are to work redemption 
or to end in ruin next November, is the ceaseless critical exam- 
ination of such characters as that of Douglas, to which this 
production is intended to yield some assistance. 

Carefully remembering the obligations given to the reader, 
I propose to bring before the public in this little volume — 
sometimes by direct statement, sometimes merely by allusion 
or suggestion — all that I find to be notably involved in the 
taking of a fiiir and truthful view of Stephen Arnold Douglas, 
in his history and in his prospects. 



INTKODUCTIOX. 13 

Here, however, we must understand what may reveal itself 
to us in such an observation. 

A fair and truthful view will doubtless find in Stephen Ar- 
nold Douglas, and his various experiences and performances, 
objects which cannot be spoken of in dry and strictly measured 
language. Nay, it is apparent at the outset, that a fair and 
truthful history of Douglas must be more or less a eulogy of 
Douglas. Being out of office, out of office-seeking, even out 
of that anonymous position in which one may have a certain 
greatness without official title — being, let me add, no court 
historiographer — I am not about to perpetrate precogitated 
praises of our " Little Giant." Yet I cannot, if I would, 
deny to Douglas the distinction which his history has made so 
precious in the eyes of all who struggle out of unexalted 
places into honorable prominence. It is evident, therefore, 
that fair and truthful as my work shall prove, it must be gen- 
erally laudatory. 

The varied, wonderful career of Douglas reaches back to a 
beginning, honorable but quite undistinguished. "Rough vul- 
garities " do not appear in that beginning, but there is no pass- 
port in it to the great distinction now enjoyed by Douglas. 
As our Western phrase would have it, here is no blazed way 
to eminence — the course is yet to be distinguished and the 
pathway yet to be cut out. The " Little Giant" is, emphatic- 
ally, a man of the people. He has solved in his own history 
the problem of self-government. It is the boast of our polit- 
ical experiment and social venture, that from the body of the 
people, genius may arise to any elevation, private or public, 
favored by our governmental principles. We cannot credit 
Douglas, therefore, with the working of a miracle in rising to 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

the height in which he is the favoiite of adrairatioa and the 
mark of envy. But the " Little Giant " can be credited with 
self-upHfting from an undistinguished way of hfe to a distinc- 
tion not confined to any one division of the world. He can 
be credited, in explanation of this great success — success which 
no revei'se of fortune can destroy, and no position much en- 
hance — with traits of character which it is foolish to depre- 
ciate and vain to question. 

He who speaks or writes of a career and character like 
these, will necessarily exalt his language, now and then, and 
never can be held to strictly measured applications of the 
tei'ms devoted to laudation. 

On the other hand, no real service will be done to real in- 
terests, if we do not, while tracing the career and ascertaining 
the distinctive tendencies of Douglas, constantly remember 
justice and discriminate the truth. Our sketch of that career, 
our indication of those tendencies, must be so clear, so free, so 
manly, that no question of its fairness can be fairly entertained 
by any voter. 

Principles like these in a production like the present may 
be unfamiliar, but if they are new, they are not so in the sense 
of novelty as commonly objected to. At all events, I shall en- 
deavor to observe them faithfully throughout the sequel. 

Nothing more or less, it seems to me, will serve the cause 
of Douglas. For, I now begin to appreciate that greatness in 
our "Little Giant," which adopts as its peculiar cause, the in- 
terests of truth in general. There was, I own, a time when I 
could not perceive this in the character of him who is the 
hero of this history. But now I know, that I shall serve the 
cause of Douglas when I serve the cause of truth — that 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

Douglas not only does not need, but cannot well afford, to be 
misrepresented even by the partiality of his enthusiastic 
friends. 

I have not asked permission to produce this life of Douglas. 
Looking on the " Little Giant" as among our public " institu- 
tions," I approach him for examination and description, as of 
right, and with the proud assurance, that 1 cannot injure, Avhile 
I may appreciate, the object of my scrutiny. And there were 
reasons why I Avished to be uninfluenced, untrammelled, un- 
embarrassed, in the \vork here offered to my brother voters. 

Let us pass, then, to a natural, unforced, familiar, yet so far 
as may be, accurate, account of the distinctions of our hero. 
Hero we may well permit ourselves to call him. His career 
has been heroic, and his heroism harmonizes with tlie tenden- 
cies of movement as our age devotes itself to movement. 
Brilliant, soldierly performances may not encounter admiration 
in his history ; but great achievements in a scene of action in 
■which splendid heroism may enact its wonders, will assuredly 
illuminate his record. 

Forever as we view him, we must view the man. Political 
distinction, like aristocratic rank, is often 

" but the guinea stamp." 

But we may find the man revealed to us as Lawyer, Legisla- 
tor, Candidate for the Supreme Political Distinction in Amer- 
ica. Let us endeavor to discern the character of Douglas in 
the three capacities just mentioned. 



THE LAWYEE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE STUDENT. 



The genially written "Life of Lincoln," by our poet 
Howells, holds initially, and, as it were, platformically, that 
every American should have an indisputable grandfather. 

If so, one defect may be at once alleged against this his- 
tory. 

There can, indeed, be no well founded doubt, that Stephen 
Arnold Douglas, himself, is quite free from such defect as that 
acknowledged as impairing this account of that distinguished 
statesman. Douglas, doubtless, has the usual supply of indis- 
putable antecedents. But no grandfather is to figure in this 
liistory except the father of the Judge himself.^ 

It may be necessary, then, to look into the doctrine of ne- 
cessity with reference to the particular here in question. 

The supposed necessity is said to be, " in order to be rep- 
resented in the Revolutionary period by actual ancestral ser- 
vice, or connected with it by ancestral reminiscence." 

To display the absolute necessity of revolutionary antece- 

1 Since \mting this chapter, and much that follows, I have examined Sheahan 'a 
Life of Douglas. But while I find sufficient evidence of the general proposition in 
the text, I find no named and therefore indisputable grandfather save as I have 
stated. 

(19) 



20 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

dents, in order to acceptability in the relation of tlie candidate 
to us voters, would require a more extended argument than 
the historian of Lincoln has devoted to that object. But, in 
sober seriousness, we Americans do hugely estimate the value 
of a set of revolutionary reminiscences in our incalculably nu- 
merous " first families." 

For all that, candor here compels the plain confession that 
the evidence before the writer does not quite unquestionably 
prove that any remarkable infusion of the blood revolutionary 
filled the pristine veins of Stephen Arnold Douglas. Doubt- 
less, however, this defect may be supplied. The gifted author 
of the " Life of Lincoln " " dimly intimates " (in imitation of 
Milton) more than he expresses, touching Lincoln's revolution- 
ary antecedents. Now, why may not the fancy of enthusiastic 
Douglasites supply the possible original defect in the Douglas 
constitution ? 

But, however this may be, the author is unable, save by cir- 
cumstance, to prove that the original ensanguination of the 
Douglas arteries, and veins, and capillaries, contained any in- 
disputable infusion of the blooJ, that, classically, fought, and 
bled, and died, in the times that, classically, tried men's souls. 

By circumstance, it may be sufficiently evident that the 
father of the mother, or the father of the father, of Judge 
Douglas must have been, if not an actor, then a warm well- 
wisher, of the revolutionary drama here enacted something like 
a century ago. 

The fact that all the tendencies of the distinguished Senator 
to whom all eyes are now directed, are a little hostile to Great 
Britain, is familiar to the public. That these tendencies will 
imdergo a mitigation in the Presidential office, may be well 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 21 

anticipated. But throughout the Senatorial career of Douglas, 
we have seen him strictly representative of the American, yet 
unsubdued hostility to England. May not this be suffered to 
establish, with sv^cient certainty, that Douglas had an indis- 
putable grandfather, and is thus connected, not merely by " an- 
cestral reminiscence," but by "actual ancestral service," with 
tlie Revolutionary period ? 

But, seriously, let us follow from its known beginnings, tlie 
course of the Douglas antecedents. 

All the sketches of these antecedents tell us, first of all, 
that Dr. Douglas was a physician well reputed, but not wealthy. 
It would seem, that though a native of New York, the father 
of Judge Douglas died at Brandon, Rutland county, Vermont. 
His death was sudden, being caused by apoplexy. 

Of his personal pecuhai-ities, liis virtues or defects, presump- 
tion only could inform the writer, and it may inform the reader 
quite unaided by the author. It is not possible to the latter to 
give any accurate account of the distinguishing prochvities of 
Dr. Douglas. He will, therefore, only note the possibility that 
some not inconsiderable attribute of the distinguishing pro- 
clivities of Stephen Arnold Douglas may be due to his inher- 
itance from one devoted to the service of the public as a phy- 
sician. A physician is at once a public character and a near 
private friend of his patients, each and every. If he be wor- 
thy of his calling, he is one devoted to a sense of duty rather 
than to the entirely lawful ambition of winnmg a distinguished 
name. And though the little Stephen was but little more than 
two months old at the time of his father's death, no one ac- 
quainted in the least with the accepted law of antecedents 



22 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

will on that account entirely cancel the suggestion first submit- 
ted to the reader. 

But no speculation of this sort deserves much space in such 
a record as this. 

Nor can we permit ourselves to dwell upon the pleasant 
probabilities of the inheritance derived from the maternal 
source. The mother of Judge Douglas is not known to us by 
any, even the most insignificant, reliable account. The subject 
is too sacred for mere speculation. 

Let us, then, content ourselves with knowing that the open- 
ing of that eventful history, which lies before us, does not seem 
without a notable relationship to the illustrious position to 
which its development has elevated Stephen Arnold Douglas. 

On the 23d of April, something over forty-seven years ago, 
the history here outlined had its undistinguished commence- 
ment. How it passed through the developing varieties of 
childhood and the period of simple boyhood, we are little able 
to declare. 

All that aids us here is infoi'mation, that the widow Douglas, 
with the infant Stephen, and a daughter only eighteen months 
older, retired to a farm ; that the whole of this farm was not 
the property of Mrs. Douglas ; that little Stephen entered on 
the study of this world beyond the stinting, narrowing con- 
fines of city life. 

If Douglas is what he appears to be, this is a fact of inter- 
est. If he is really and truly great — if he has worked a splen- 
did way through formidable difficulties to a triumph which does 
not depend upon the question, "Who shall be our President?" 
— it is an interesting fact that he is not of urban origin. 

Is it not the common voice of history that greatness seldom 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 23 

dates from cities — from the Londons, Parises, New Yorks? 
Can any one regard it as an unimportant fact that Douglas 
had for birthplace and for place of first impressions, Brandon 
rather than Boston, Philadelphia, or Charleston ? 

The " Little Yankee," as the mixed aesthetics and fire-eaters 
of a certain region have begun to call Judge Douglas, was in 
his first years familiar with farm life in the vicinity of his 
New England birthplace. 

In his time, the town of Brandon may have been quite dif- 
fereit from what we find it now- Near the village passes 
Otter Creek, and Mill River, a branch of Otter Creek, is said 
to furnish good water-power. There are two cupola and two 
blast furnaces in Brandon, as well as a lead pipe factory, a 
last factory, a flouring mill, and ten saw-mills. But neither 
these, nor the adjacent railroad, nor the prized academy, nor 
the testifying thirteen schools, inform us largely as to the pecu- 
liarities of Brandon and its neighborhood as they impressed 
the mind of Douglas while it was most subject to impression. 
For we know not accurately how much all of this is due to 
changes of a recent period. 

"We {.re certain, that substantial old fashions more or less 
prevailed at Brandon in the boyhood days of Douglas. We 
are certaii. that the chief distinction of the progress then re- 
garded by Brandonians was its tendency to better educational 
provisions, and to give a solid cultivation to the intellect. 

How far die physical distinctions of the place may be re- 
garded as reflected in the character of Douglas, it may be im- 
possible for this historian to pronounce. At the instant of this 
writing, le has never seen the birthplace of our " Little Giant," 
and his information does not furnish him with the ability to 



24 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

give the reader more than a faint indication of the nature and 
the art with which our hero was familiar in his boyhood. 

Otter Creek — a stream which in the West would bear a 
more pretentious designation — rises in the South-east of our 
hero's native county, flowing in a general course of N. by "W. 
into Lake Champlain. Ninety miles in length, it is navigable 
for the largest lake vessels to Vergennes — six miles — and 
boatable from the falls of Middlebury to Pitsford, twenty-5ve 
miles. It has falls at Middlebury, Way bridge, and Vergennes, 
affording extensive water-power.^ 

Nearing but not touching Brandon village, it receives a 
branch which passes through the village, and affords good wa- 
ter-power for the local uses. 

In its coui'se, it once touches, and it generally nears, the fireen 
Mountain region. When it reaches the vicinity of Brmdon, 
it is still not distant from the mountains, and the landscape, of 
which it is part, is said to be a hill and valley modification of 
the mountainous vicinity. 

The valley of the village is not wide, and the relief of in- 
equality in surface, though not rising into mountainous sublim- 
ity or broken into glen or chasm, may entitle, Brandon to 
description as romantically situate and pleasantly attractive. 
So, at least, the writer would infer from the descrip/ions given 
to him by a gentleman familiar to some extent with Douglas' 
antecedents, and acquainted well with Brandon and its neigh- 
borhood. 

No feature of the landscape with which Douglas was famil- 
iar in his boyhood, and no featui'e of the social life that it 

- Harp. Gazetteer, tit. Otter Cr., Tt. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 25 

contributed to fashion, strikes us Avith the sense of grandeur. 
But no moral meanness would reflect the genius loci. 

Here we would not seek the flower of the virtues, which in 
latitudes of greater softness, richness, and variety, are thought 
to be indigenous. We should not seek at Brandon the pecu- 
liar charm of soft attractive graces, generous devotion to the 
promptings of a quick, magnanimous, chivalric spirit, easy and 
respectful interchange of various opinions. Whether we 
should find that charm, in its entirety, at present, any where 
within the reach of pro- or anti-slavery excitement, I do not 
propose at present to inquire. It is enough to know that 
if this charm was ever found except in the poetic fables, it is 
not to be discerned in Brandon now, and it was certainly not 
the distinction of our hero's birthplace during his boyhood. 

On the other hand, there must have been at Brandon, in the 
times of Douglas, a considerable remnant of that puritan de- 
votion to the sense of duty, which, when freed from foreign 
qualities, is certainly a valuable motive and an equally valua- 
ble check. 

There were times in our brief history, when patriotic poetry 
and oratory well discriminated the sense of Honor as it ruled the 
then beloved "sunny South," from the peculiar sense of Duty 
by which the then esteemed New England was distinguished. 
Each of these distinctions once excited admiration. North, 
and South, and East, and West, throughout the Union. Now 
there seems to be a strange perversion. North and South. 
The sense of Honor, which has often beautified, now threatens 
to deface, the intercourse of North and South. The sense of 
Duty, which once constituted the security, now threatens to 
become the fire-brand, of the commonwealth. 



26 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

But I will not anticipate. It is enough, at present, to 
remark that, in the room, equally of the perverted sense of 
duty which now manifests itself as mere fanaticism, and of the 
perverted sense of honor, which now attempts in certain 
regions to displace the Christian morals — the Brandonians in 
the tiQie of Douglas acted with regard to a valuable remnant 
of the ancient puritan conception of devotion to the right. 

That remnant had been freed to some extent from the alloy- 
ing presence of some qualities, that sometimes seemed to make 
it a curse where it was meant to bless. And it is only 
fair to credit Brandon with assisting Douglas to a sense of 
right, which, developed freely by our Western boldness, free- 
dom, and adventurousness, qualified him to command success 
and to despise any opposition that should attempt to arrest him 
by the false suggestions of the code of honor. 

Language such as this is necessary to the purposes, which 
lie before the writer. But, unhappily, it is precisely such as 
is most liable to be misunderstood. Let me explain it, ere 
proceeding further. 

I am not aware that any instance has occurred of a refusal 
on the part of Douglas to acknowledge the duello. Whether 
he was ever challenged, I am not informed. But, certainly, 
the course of his opponents more than once has looked in the 
direction of the duel. Northern minds, averse to any rec- 
ognition of that species of conflict, which in other latitudes 
has been resorted to with freedom, as if it could settle princi- 
ples or shield the right, have more than once been tempted to 
forget alike the morals which they reverence, and the peculiar 
status of the " Little Giant," by indulging for a moment the 
enquiry, " Will he stand this ? " And intemperate discussions 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 27 

have been caused in Northern, and it may be in Southern 
circles, by the bearing of some Southern Senators towards 
the favorite of the Great West. 

It pains the writer to refer for any purpose to the facts 
alluded to. From first to last, this volume is intended to 
reflect fraternal feeling towards all who honestly maintain 
opinions, moral or political, which to the writer seem errone- 
ous. But the facts referred to — visible from time to time as 
toning Southern manner in the Senate-house, rather than in 
any noisily discussed aggression — are as much of interest to all 
true lovers of the Union as they are, unhappily, beyond the 
reach of question. And I should but ill perform the duty 
undertaken at the outset of this work, if I should shrink from 
the considerations here presented to the reader. 

I must be at liberty, therefore, in several succeeding para- 
graphs. 

Want of magnanimity and want of courage have been said 
to be discernible in the behavior, and to be apparent even in 
the original constitution, of our hero. 

As our hero, Douglas must not lack a real magnanimity. 

But the magnanimity which certain definitions of great- 
mindedness would designate, though not entirely wanting in the 
character of Douglas, does not seem to me a notable distinc- 
tion of that character. Indeed, I may without offence to 
any place or person add, that with reference to received 
definitions, magnanimity is not a marked distinction of New 
England character. Whether it belongs to Southern latitudes, 
the lesson of November may assist us to determine. 

The magnanimity that is reflected in a great devotion to a 
great ambition cannot be denied to Douglas. The aesthetic 



28: THE LIB^E OF STEPHEN A, DOUGLAS. 

magnanimity that gracefully approaches and dramatically 
illustrates the sense of such devotion, does not seem to me 
characteristic of our " Little Giant." 

Practical, devoted to his aims, a man of will and destiny, 
Stephen Arnold Douglas has not studied, and he was not born 
to illustrate, the showy virtue of which magnanimity is the re- 
ceived name. 

Neither want of real magnanimity, nor lack of real courage, 
can be found in Douglas, fairly tried by his designs, his duties, 
and his conscious value as a representative man. 

It would be quite absurd to credit Douglas with the knightly 
courage known as bravery. The startling clarion, the glanc- 
ing sunlight, and the waving pennon, might not elevate his 
courage into that peculiar blending of an uncontrollable ex- 
citement with high purpose, which Napoleon, even, left for 
illustration to his marshals. But it is in strict accordance 
with the truth to say, that no man ever lived the life of Doug- 
las as a craven, or encountered duty as he has encountered it, 
as one afraid of any human power. 

Certainly, young Douglas may have learned from the Bran- 
donians — I do not confine myself to the mere village — to dis- 
tinguish between courage, purpose, and performance, on the 
one hand, and the shining qualities, on the other hand, that 
sometimes dazzle men into a foolish sacrifice of life, of trust, 
and of duty, where the menace answers argument, and the 
duel takes the place of demonstration. 

In the circumstances in which Douglas has been tempted 
by the usages that sometinies bare the sword or aim the pistol 
in the seeming interest of honor, courage has been really in- 
volved in simple maintenance of the assumed position, at the 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 29 

peril of the unprovided personal encounter, or the greater 
peril of reputed cowardice. Never has our hero been at lib- 
erty to fight false issues in false modes. Never has he been 
without a trust, a purpose, and a destiny too strong for him or 
others to subject to the mad hazard of the barbarous field, 
" where honorable difficulties are adjusted." 

All this would be more apparent, doubtless, if we knew the 
history of Douglas as we ought to know it — fully and from 
the beginning. I regret that I am not at liberty to call upon 
my hero for some indication of his boyish foretastes of the 
antagonism that he has experienced in manhood. But my 
purpose to collect my facts without the knowledge of Judge 
Douglas must be thoroughly approved by all considerate, 
right minded men. And now I must depend upon the facts 
presented to the reader, leaving, though not finally, the ques- 
tion of the courage and magnanimity of Douglas with this 
observation : The community of a New England village did 
not lack, when Douglas was a boy, a real magnanimity — it 
did not then, it does not now, and it will never, lack a real 
courage. « 

It has now become a mooted question, whether poverty op- 
pressed the youth of Douglas, compelling him to abandon his 
desire of college life, and to become — prophetically, witlings 
have suggested and respectable humorists have hinted — a cab- 
inet-maker. 

But before we reach that question, we may well dispose of 
another. 

Having lived, to some extent, a farmer's life until he left the 
hills and meadow lands of Brandon, Douglas might have split 
a rail. 



30 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

But, did he ? 

momentous, unanswerable question ! 

Whether Douglas ever so contributed to ease, to taste, to 
comfort, to security, in the economy of agriculture, it must be 
acknowledged that no history records and no tradition inti- 
mates. 

As if by way of compensation for the absence of the raille- 
ry involved in any popular account of Lincoln, we were long 
permitted to enjoy the sober satisfaction, that our hero had 
been useful with his hands as a mechanic, not as a diversion 
but as a necessity. It was so grateful to our feelings to con- 
sider that our hero had been pinched into performance as a 
common 'prentice, that we cannot easily accept the information, 
that our hero was set to cabineting by his mother, " simply to 
cure an overruling boyish desire to work in wood." 

1 cling to the received account. I insist on the poverty of 
Douglas. What! Are we to have our hero elevated into 
youthful comfort and exalted into a gentlemanly joiner, 
where we knew him as a common "'prentice hand?" Are 
we, the people, to be told, that ^ouglas loved to whittle, 
" peskily," and therefore was permitted to amuse himself and 
to exhaust his over-fondness for performances in wood, by 
playing 'prentice? 

Seriously, the new story does not hang together ; yet it may 
prevent some foohsh errors, or correct some. 

Neither pinching poverty nor an extremely opposite condw 
tion seems to have been known to Douglas in his boyhood. 
And we ought to be ashamed of caring much to count the 
widow-mother's dollars, on the day that Douglas "went to 
work " as an apprentice. Have we yet to learn that there 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A, DOUGLAS. 31 

are " rough vulgarities " in poverty and wealth alike ? What 
great anxiety should we display to prove that Douglas did not 
choose, instead of being forced, to learn the art of cabinet- 
making ? 

If the fact is — and I know a shopmate of the " Little 
Giant" who informs me that it is — that Douglas worked at 
Brandon and at Middlebury — never " rowdying around " — 
addressing all his powers more or less to useful objects — to his 
trade and to his studies chiefly — if the local feeling, that each 
member of society should be an expert in some form of indus- 
try, at first led him to select, and if a growing preference of 
distinctively intellectual labor at last led him to abandon, the 
respectable mechanic art alluded to — whose pride is hurt, and 
who shall turn away from the career of Douglas with contempt 
or disappointment ? 

Doubtless, that would be an interesting history of Douglas 
which should trace him from the study of the fitness of things 
involved in furniture, to the study of the fitness of things in- 
volved in architecture of another order. Douglas, studying a 
joint in cabinet-making — Douglas studying a joint in legisla- 
tion ! — who shall paint this for us as it might be painted ? 

From the shopmate of our hero mentioned in a former par- 
agraph, I have derived the information that the supposition 
which that paragraph suggests, might be converted into a his- 
toric statement. My informant is opposed pohtically to the 
"Little Giant," but he is an honorable man, now holding 
places of distinction in society, and he gives his recollections 
truly. K those recollections be not much at fault, the life of 
Douglas while he worked at Middlebury — remote alike from 
" rough vulgarities " and from the aimlessness that sometimes 



32 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

murders, as by a slow poison, all the hopes of youth — was the 
very sort of life which avouM prepare him well for the career 
before him. 

Douglas, it would seem, though not a sloven, was, in youth, 
regardless of the great effect produced by dress. No lover of 
the beautiful will ever hold him blameless, and no lover of the 
economic can entirely overlook his fault, in this particular. 
When natui-e has not made us very beautiful, we ought to be 
a little economical of our good points. 

It was the love of study, that made Douglas careless of his 
outward man. 

And, after working out his love of whittling (or if better 
known accounts be true, after a certain loss of health had hap- 
pened to him), unremitted study was the next experience of 
Douglas — study evidently ever since, in some form, the inces- 
sant occupation of this master-spirit — study, which in the 
academy, in the lawyer's office, in tliat Western emigration, in 
teaching school, in the " Squire's office," throughout the advo- 
cate's experience, upon the bench, in the addresses to the peo- 
ple from the " stump," and in the halls of legislation, might 
be varied, but could never be entirely given up. 

The "rough vulgarities" which Piyor found in Douglas' 
early education, or its product, are not well apparent in the 
academic year at Brandon, or in that begun in Canandaigua, 
at the end of the Brandon school-days. 

Mrs. Douglas having married Mr. Granger, Stephen went 
with her to Canandaigua. Here, as intimated, he entered the 
local academy. 

The legal studies of the future Judge were also here com- 
menced. But, although willing, I am quite unable to inform 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 33 

the reader by what course of reading, strictly legal or relating 
to the general development of his capabilities, young Douglas 
laid the strong foundation of his legal learning and his views 
of polity. I look upon it as a great defect in the accounts of 
Douglas, that they do not well possess us of his special prepa- 
ration for the bar. Allowing all that ought to be allowed by 
way of discount on the rapid elevation of our hero to the of- 
fice of State's Attorney, and afterwards to the supreme judi- 
cial dignity, in Illinois, I cannot but imagine that it would be 
well to know his course of study while in Canandaigua. We 
shall find in Douglas, as a judge, some evidence that he wa^^ 
really a student while in Canandaigua. 

Having been, it is but fair to presume, quite cured of hie 
Brandonian fancy for performances in wood, what was there 
in the new experiences of the future statesman to prevent his 
soberly preparing for the legal practice that so often, in 
America, prepares the Senator for Senatorial distinction ? 

Douglas never has been charged with the high crime of po- 
esie. The gentle hills and lovely plains, the lake, the beauti- 
ful additions to the work of nature, in which Canandaigua ie 
attractive, must have charmed the fancy, but they evident- 
ly did not poetize the character, of our law student. Black- 
stone was not necessarily a sacrifice to Byron, nor was Izaak 
Walton absolutely ii'resistible, because our student lived in 
Canandaigua. No : young Douglas must have studied — 
studied thoroughly — in Canandaigua. No such Judge, of any 
age, as Stephen Arnold Douglas proved to be at twenty-eight, 
was ever really a spendthrift of his time at the beginning of 
his legal studies. 

Sheahan's Life — unknown to me when the preceding para- 
3 



34 THE LIFE or STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

graphs were written — furnishes no indication of the legal 
studies in the office of the Messrs. Hubbell. But we are in- 
formed that our student, " on a thorough examination upon his 
whole course of study, was allowed a credit of three years for 
his classical attainments at the time he commenced the study 
of the law;" and that "when he removed to the West .... 
he had mastered nearly the entire collegiate course in most of 
the various branches required of a graduate in our best uni- 
versities." 3 

In harmony with information elsewhere'' noticed, I refer in 
this connection also to the Sheahan Life for an account of 
Douglas, in his boyish leadership in politics at Canandaigua. 
Douglas was a Jackson boy, and plead the cause of Jackson 
" like a man." 

Of the peculiar political tendency of Douglas, I have else- 
where hazarded a judgment.^ I will not at present dwell 
upon the indications, furnished by the " Life " alluded to, of 
Douglas, the best " posted " of the youths at Canandaigua in 
the politics of the time, the always ready for discussion, the 
accustomed victor in debate. 

The reader must be eager to accompany our hero West- 
ward. Nay, he cannot be patiently detained at Cleveland, 
with her inland sea, or at Cincinnati, with her 

" wild and winding river/' 

or at the City of the Falls, or at that great City of the North- 
ern Mississippi, in which, as in Cleveland, liberal and noble 
men attempted to arrest the progress of our young adven- 

3 Sheahan's Douglas, 5. ^ Written before encountering tlie Sheahan Life 

« Chapter II. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 35 

turer.^ Yet at each of these resting places of our hero, and on 
his way from point to point of his approach to his Illinois first 
impressions, trying ordeals, and great successes, much of in- 
terest is known to have occurred, and much of interest may 
be supposed to have occurred, by way of preparation for the 
greatness now developed in our " Little Giant of the AVest." 

Was not that a useful sickness, v/hich, at Cleveland, gave 
our hero time to study what he was and what he might be- 
come, and where he might apply, develop, and become distin- 
guished in his conscious powers ? If it sent him, weak, and 
" pale, and anxious," to Cincinnati, there defeating his desire 
of work by proving that he truly needed it — for so it is Avith 
our experience — if it deprived him of the buoyancy of mind 
that might have recommended him at Louisville, or made him 
hopeful at St. Louis ^^ it was still a useful sickness. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas had been booked for Illinois. 

*' There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough hew them how we will." 

<! "Mr. Andrews [Sherlock J.] was pleased with the youth; gave him all the in- 
formation he could furnish, but advised him to remain in Cleveland, and as an in- 
ducement to do so, tendered him the use of his library and oface until he should 
have pursued his law studies for one year within the State, as required by the laws 
of Ohio, when he would be entitled to admission to the bar, at which time, such was 
Mr. Andrews' liberal offer, Douglas was to be associated with Mr. Andrews as a mem- 
ber of the firm Arrived at St. Louis, he made the acquaintance oi 

the Hon. Edward Bates, then as now an eminent lawyer and an ornament to his pro- 
fession. Mr. Bates was kind to the young stranger, encouraging him by his advice, 
and tendering him the free use of his office and library until he could get into prac- 
tice on his own account." Sheahan's Douglas, pp. 7, 8. 

' '• He concluded to seek without delay some country town, where if his earnings 
were small, his expenses at least would be far less than in the large city.'' Shea- 
han's Life, 9. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE ADVOCATE. 



Western emigration, including in its wild experiences even 
that precursor of the wilderness reclaimed, the steamboat voy- 
age, must have made a deep impression on the mind of Doug- 
las. Whether on the lake or on the river, steamboat life in 
'33 was full of various suggestiveness. 

We may not be at liberty to entertain the fancy, that imag- 
ination, touched by new and strange realities, artistically 
" bodied forth the forms of things unknown," for Douglas, as 
he sat on deck or guard at evening to note and to enjoy the 
scenery of the " beautiful river." More reliable would be the 
fancy, that the morning with its golden promise strikingly 
appealed to Douglas on his western way. Yet more in har- 
mony, perhaps, with all we know of Douglas is the supposition 
that the lively, varied conversation of the steamboat more and 
more prepared him for the working out of that "gi-eat prin- 
ciple," which Lincoln has learned how to ridicule, but which 
has been to Douglas as a guiding star. 

The information which the writer has alluded to, as gen- 
erously given by an early associate of Douglas, pointed among 
other things to the reality in all the being of our hero, of the 

f36) 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 37 

tendencies that have devoted him to that great principle, which 
Lincoln only humorously affects to ridicule. For, .Lincoln, 
let me say in passing, is what Lincoln is — no undistinguished 
dignity is represented in that statement — simply out of the 
reality and worthiness of that great principle. Whoever rings 
the changes on the words which designate the latter, in his 
heart confesses that they designate a grand, a noble interest of 
our humanity. 

But, to return : The early life of Douglas, as it passed from 
honorable usefulness in a mechanic art into an equally hon- 
orable and useful preference of the pursuits which look to a 
professional and political career, gave testimony as it passed 
to a devoted sense of the great principle of popular discretion 
as involved in what we call the State. Apart from the ex- 
pressions of his tendencies to be detected in the very progress 
of our hero towards public life, there are remembered more 
explicit declarations of the native tendencies of Douglas to 
accept with heartiness, and to defend and vindicate with con- 
stancy, the democratic principle of all our institutions. 

And no mode of life, to which our hero owed impressions, 
previously to his adventure in the "West, had in the least 
diminished his devotion to that fundamental principle. No 
portion of our country had been educated into an aristocratic 
estimation of " mud sills" or "rough vulgarities." No good 
or evil influence had made it lawful in the Senate, or discreet 
in editorial performances, to forget the dignity of honorable 
labor or to condescend towards unpolished honesty. And 
Douglas may have learned some lessons on those Western steam- 
boats which conveyed him towards undeveloped Illinois, that 



38 THE LIFE OF STEPHEX A. DOUGLAS. 

have been, most unhappily, forgotten by his haughty or his 
condescending critics. 

Steamboat life on Western waters at the time of which we 
write brought into friendly contact wonderful varieties of 
character. And conversation, in that life, was naturally full 
of our American ideas — of the farm lands to be cleared, of 
cities to be built, of navigation to be freed from peril, of the 
vast To Be in all its forms. It was, therefore, a school of our 
American philosophy in which the doctrines were alike ac- 
quired with readiness and applied with promptitude. 

Of this philosophy, the whole career of Douglas is among the 
most instructive and suggestive illustrations thus far furnished 
by the history of American life. We have seen the young Jack- 
sonian democrat as Mr. Sheahan pictures him, and as the gen- 
tleman before alluded to as having been acquainted with the 
youth of Douglas, has described his tendencies as then appar- 
ent. We shall find hereafter, that the habit of regarding all 
political and legal interests as popular in origin, in develop- 
ment, and in design and destination, sometimes quite uncon- 
sciously expressed itself in forms antici^jative of the doctrines 
lately illustrated by our Senator. One instance will be prom- 
inently given in the next chaptei*. It will show our hero 
pointing out the popular administration of the English Com- 
mon Law, when he had evidently no design of indicating his 
peculiar views of territorial conditions, rights, or interests. ^ 
And while we recognize the salient points of the life of Doug- 
las as an advocate, we shall have reason to remark upon the 
constant interpenetration of his action and his views, by the 

1 See the notice in the next chapter of the opinion of Judge Douglas In Penny y. 
Little, 3 Seammon, 301. 



THE LIFE OF SLEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 39 

omnipresence, if I may employ that word in this connexion, 
of popular rights. 

Not only conversation on the steamboat — lake or i-iver — 
must have tended to develop in the mind of Douglas the con- 
viction just alluded to. His passage from the Forest City to 
Cincinnati was in part by way of the then so highly prized 
canal. The observations in New York, the encounter of the 
feeling in Ohio on the subject of canals and other public works, 
would have prepared him for a view of popular concernment 
in a system of improvements, in which more and more the 
omnipresence of the popular in our political experiment would 
be discerned by such a mind as we have contemplated in the 
Middlebury workshop. 

Not to dwell too long in these considerations, let us once 
more fix our eyes upon the destination of our hero. 

Illinois was not, Avhen Douglas entered its domain of prom- 
ise, what short-sighted politicians, with the view of meanly 
questioning the indications furnished by the great success of 
the lawyer whose career we now attempt to follow, have 
affected to consider it. 

The State of Illinois has had a strange variety of popula- 
tion. First of all the Eui'opean emigrants (or those of 
European lineage), came the French. We may hereafter 
glance at the evidences and influences of this Galilean feature 
in the settlement of Illinois, remaining at the time of which 
we write. And then a miscellany came, of which it has been 
easy to suggest the most ill-founded notions. 

Even those who give us that account of Douglas, in which 
he appears as chosen, upon mere inspection, for the auc- 
tioneer's assistant, do not give a ftiir and truthful picture of 



40 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

the times. It is the implication of their anecdote, that Doug- 
las had just penetrated into a western savagery. Now, though 
there were in 1833, and though there have been since, some 
portions of the State of Illinois, in wliich mere savagism was 
apparently predominant, it would be quite unjust to Illinois 
to overlook the leading character of the first settlements. 

That leading character was very far removed from sav- 
agism. 

No man can carefully examine the juridical and other public 
indications of the characters by which the settlers of Illinois 
were generally marked, without perceiving how absurd it would 
be, to consider all the State as we may fairly look upon some 
portions of it. 

Jacksonville, where Douglas first proposed to " settle," had 
no savage population. Even then it had an educational dis- 
tinction. Nor, I think, was Winchester, in w hich our hero 
played the pedagogue and (in the inoffensive sense) the petti- 
fogger, a seat of whatsoever savagism then existed in the 
State. 

It was, in general, in southern " settlements," that it was re- 
markable that there were " but few specimens of the more re- 
fined, enterprising, intellectual, and moral people," and that 
" society generally there was of a very low class." It was in 
Pope and Massac, not in Scott and IVIorgan counties, that the 
rogues built forts, and regulators took the powers of the law 
into unlicensed hands. It was not in the town of Jacksonville, 
or in the town of Winchester, that thieves and counterfeiters 
underwent the torture. 

Doubtless, there are evidences that the evil of tlie lawless- 
ness at first confined to southern border counties spread towards 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 41 

the North. Nauvoo was to the North-east of our hero's first 
" location." Joseph Smith and his savage disciples built their 
temple of abominations, set the State at naught, and met the 
bloody penalty of their trangressions in a region which was not 
at first distinguished by a savage disposition. Wonders are 
not seen alone in the diffusion of the anti-slavery and the pro- 
slavery fanaticism. All the forms of error are incalculably 
infectious. 

At the time of Douglas' walk to Winchester, the Pope and 
Massac region had been under arms, and rogues and regula- 
tors — for the regulators had not then changed to rogues — had 
joined in battle, and the issue had been bloody. 

How much Douglas knew and thought of these things as he 
journeyed towards Winchester, we know not. But if he was 
sometimes watchful on his lonely march — if with the iron will 
that bore him forward, struggled sometimes certain easily 
imaginable backward tendencies — who shall wonder? For, 
our hero could not have been wholly ignorant of the late 
bloody contest in the South of Illinois, and though he had se- 
lected quite another section of the State for his location, was 
he not a stranger, and alone, and who knows not the feeling 
of the lonely stranger in such circumstances? 

On the other hand, the promises of Illinois were splendid, 
even as her realization of them has been. 

She could show those fertile stretches between bluff and 
river, so remarkably productive of the only real " wealth of 
nations." She could show the only less productive regions of 
dry prairie land, in which the country has, perhaps, its best 
known characteristic. She could show her wealth of minerals 
for manufacture, her wealth of the facilities of commerce — lake 



42 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

and river and the open plain — her Mississippi and her Michi- 
gan. Her future was not evident, but all her promises were 
rational, and they were brilliant as well as rational. Though 
Springfield was a mere collection of log-cabins, and Chicago 
was but three years old, it may have been apparent to our hero 
that there was no reason for despair as he marched towards his 
destined first successes. 

At Jacksonville, Douglas found some reason to be disap- 
pointed. Or, the state of his finances made it necessary for 
him to seek employment in some less pretentious place. His 
" rough vulgarities " now amounted to precisely 37^ cents. 

It was not, therefore, mere preference of the Adamic style 
of traveling that moved him in that walk of sixteen miles to 
Winchester, " in search of a place " as teacher. 

Nor was it a mere interest in auctioneering, which induced 
him at. the latter 2:)lace to play accountant to an auctioneer. 
The story here alluded to informs us that the future candidate 
for the Presidency pocketed six dollars for his " clerking " in 
this instance. 

Here it may be seriously questioned whether any such ex- 
perience as that alluded to was ever that of Douglas. For, 
the story tellers have it, that the auctioneer perceived that Mr. 
Douglas, who stood among the spectators, loohed like a man who 
could write and keep accounts. Now, according to the rule 
of Dogberry, that " to write and read comes by nature," some 
men miglit have looked the mixed capacity to Avrite and keep 
accounts. But Benton would have argued that the distance 
between the extremity of the superior garment worn by Doug- 
las and the surface of the eai'th, was quite too short for such 
an indication. 



THE LIFE or STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 43 

So this anecdote, like the physical capacity of Douglas to be 
President, may be exposed to question. 

But the walk is evidently no mere fiction. 

What a walk that may have been ! "We have designated it 
a march. And march it must have been. And yet how every 
lengthened weary mile may have been marked by doubts 
and fears ! In that adventure, 

" Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slo^y," 

as, partly, we may certainly declare it was, and, partly, we 
may well conjecture that it was, there must have been some 
thinking that would prove an interesting study, in the presence of 
the great success which Douglas has achieved. The weaxy way 
towards "Winchester was really a glorious way towards "Wash- 
ington. But even the distinctive characters of Douglas do not 
warrant us in fancying, that an unbroken gladness marched 
with our adventurer, or that anticipation furnished him with 
brilliant prospects only, as he jogged on to the village where 
he hoped " to teach the young idea how to shoot." 

It would be difficult to overestimate the proper dignity and 
usefulness of the schoolmaster's office, but it would be difficult 
to prove that, in that walk to Winchester, the attractions of the 
teacher's functions to our hero were remarkable. 

He had not sought that Western State to win a place among 
the teachers, or a name among the educators. If he now de- 
sired a school, it was because he wanted money. 

On the other hand, it was quite probable — nay, it is certain 
— that whatever melancholy musings, doubts, or fears, may 
have accompanied our hero, AVill, unconquerable Will, went 



44 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

with him also. Else he had turned back, or at the least sho^vn 
signs of faltering. 

The modes of life which he had left were not the fashions 
of an ancient civilization ; but between the way from Jackson- 
ville to Winchester and the well-ordered town of Canandaigua, 
with its beautiful suiToundings, what a contrast must have been 
presented at the time of which we write ! 

We have referred to Douglas as a man of courage. Cour- 
age must have been with him as he encountered the varieties 
of character that lay before him in that walk to Winchester. 

I have, indeed, suggested reasons for accepting with allow- 
ance some of the accounts of early life in Illinois. And I 
have ventured to surmise that Winchester and Jacksonville 
were comparatively little marked by the contrasts to old-fash- 
ioned social life which certain parts of Illinois presented. 
But in no new State could the emigrant avoid encounters with 
the characters to whom the law of physical superiority is 
mightier than the law of the land. 

How Douglas met these characters we do not know. But 
if he had not physical superiority, he had an intellectual and 
moral power that is greater than the might of muscle, that can 
aim with a more perfect skill, and strike Avith a more fearful 
execution — that does havoc where the strongest arms can only 
do a homicide. 

We have no very reliable portraiture of Douglas dating sc 
far back as '33. But then as now he must have had an ai' 
mory wuth which he could encounter great apparent odds. 

His popularity, so instant and so constant, moves our won- 
der. Yet why should it ? Pithy sayings, forceful jests, strong 
answers and strong silences, were evidently at command with 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 45 

Douglas from the first. And these are things which fuiiiish 
few for the beginning of the race, and stay with fewer still to 
the conclusion of the contest. 

Once arrived at Winchester, our hero's history began to show 
that tendency to public service — and, if the concession be de- 
manded, to the honors known as public — by which the career 
before us is so notably distinguished. There is no paradox in 
stating, that the chief distinction even of the private character 
of Douglas is its public tendency or inclination. And this 
tendency appears to have been manifest at a very early age. 

If Douglas, at the age of fifteen, had an overruling fancy 
for working in wood, his overruling fancy, at the age of twenty, 
proved to be to work in a material of quite another order. 
He began to show a disposition to be active in controlling mind, 
in mastering the difficulties of the public service, in furnishing 
himself with the capacity for statesmanship. 

This disposition is not strikingly apparent in the teaching of 
those forty pupils at the town of Winchester. It may not 
strikingly display itself in the resumption of his legal studies, 
with the books borrowed from Jacksonville. It may not strik- 
ingly appear in his earliest forensic efforts — those of which his 
Saturdays were the appointed times, and which had for their 
humble forum the " Squire's office." .But it is discei-nible 
throughout the whole career of Douglas from the instant of 
his first activity in Illinois. 

When he was not quite twenty-one our hero was admitted 
to the bar, according to the liberal — the necessarily far from 
strict — provisions of the local system. His admission was in 
the Supreme tribunal — and within a year the Legislature dub- 
bed him State's Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit. 



46 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A, DOUGLAS. 

To read the record of his rapid rise reminds us rather ol 
the fiction than of the subdued and sober history of greatness 

The " Life of Lincoln " ah-eady mentioned tells us, that thf 
first recorded vote of Lincoln " against Stephen A. Douglas 
was on the election of that politician to the Attorney General 
ship by the Legislature." 

Doubtless — and I say it respectfully — the anti-Jackson feel 
ing was so great with Mr. Lincoln that he would have voted 
against Douglas on the supposed occasion ; and probably did 
vote against him for the less distinguished office already men 
tioned. But, if I am right, Mr. Douglas never was Attorney 
General of Illinois, and Lincoln never voted either for or 
against the '' Little Giant " as a candidate for the place of 
Attorney Generah 

The esteemed author of the " Life of Lincoln," doubtless, 
followed what he found in cyclopaedias, etc., in making the 
statement alluded to. And all the recent accounts of Douglas 
that I have seen, contain a similar statement.^ 

But on looking into the reports of adjudged cases, to exam- 
ine what they might disclose of the pecuUarities of Douglas 
as a lawyer, I discovered to my great relief, that there is 
probably an eri'or in the statement in question. 

Mr. Scammon, in the first volume of his reports, gives a list 
of the Attorneys General from 1819 to 1840. Mr. Douglas 
is not " listed." Nor is his name to be found as Attorney 
General in any of the reports. 

On the other hand, there is a case,^ in which Stephen A. 

2 New Amer. Cyclop, tit. Douglas; "Our Living Representative Men," p. 217; 
Life of Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois. With his most im- 
portant Speeches and Reports. By a Member of the Western Bar, p. 22. 

3 People V. Moblei/, 1 Scammon, 215. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 47 

Douglass — so his name is printed throughout the series of 
Illinois reports — appears as filing an information in the nature 
of quo warranto, in the capacity of " State's Attorney " for 
the " First Judicial Circuit."^ 

When I say that this discovery appears to me to relieve my 
hero from an imputation, I would not be understood as speak- 
ing disrespectfully of any office, past or present, in the State 
of Illinois. 

But had our hero been Attorney General at twenty-two 
and with his slight experience, it would have been entirely 
just to charge him with a grave error at the very outset of 
his professional career. Indeed, I must be permitted to say, 
that a not unimportant departure from received ideas of u 
rational advancement was involved in the acceptance, six 
years afterwards, of the judicial office. And an error of the 
same description seems discernible in the fii'st candidacy of 
our " Little Giant " for the Presidency. 

It is quite in vain to answer these exceptions by appealing 
to the history of General Napoleon at the age of twenty- 
seven, or of William Pitt, the English minister, at twenty-four. 
The sober judgment of the real friends of Douglas will sup- 
port the M^riter — speaking here with some slight reference to 
his own personal expei'ience — when he concedes, that Douglas 
was too soon advanced to the supreme judicial dignity in Illi 
nois, too soon advanced to the position of a candidate for the 
Supreme Political Distinction in America. Like Brecken- 
ridge, he was 

" so wise, so young," 

■•Since the foregoins was written, I have found that I am not mistaken. See 
Sheahan's Life, 21. 



48 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

that we may almost wonder that he lives — that he has lived 
through all the trials of precocity to be entirely worthy of 
the honor which his party now with reason asks in his behalf. 

But, unlike his ffisthetically strong but not in other respects 
remarkably formidable contestant for the honors lately given 
in the Baltimore Convention, Douglas from the first and to 
the pi'esent hour has constantly been marked by an uncom- 
mon and distinctively substantial fitness for each place con- 
ferred upon him. If he erred in risking all the real perils 
and all the reputed evils of precocious public service, he so 
labored in his various relations to the public as to raise a 
question whether nature had not fitted him for all he under- 
took. 

We know that nature never fitted any man for the perform- 
ances by which the name of Douglas has been made illus- 
trious. "We know that Shakspeare's oflicer, already alluded 
to, was quite mistaken — that reading and writing do not come 
by nature. We are certain, that to be a lawyer is not born in 
any man, and that judicial honors, presidential dignities and 
trusts, ought not to be conferred upon a man before his ripe 
maturity of fitness. 

If in nothing else, the course of Douglas now appears to 
have been erroneous in the particular here in question, be- 
cause it has to some extent apparently invited that assault 
upon th? now matured and eminently qualified " Senator from 
Illinois " — how many are there ? — which accuses him of an 
inordinate ambition. I expect to make a full and satisfactory 
defence of Douglas against this assault. But on my con- 
science as a citizen, I dare not say that it was wise in Douglas 
to accept, so rapidly, the honors and responsibilities of which 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 49 

he has been so often the distinguished and successful bearer. 
And in presence of the pledges, gi^en or implied in the in-" 
itial chapter, I concede that he who votes for Douglas must 
excuse — he cannot justify, however he admu'e — the wonder- 
fully rapid elevation of our hero, from place to place in polit- 
ical distinction. 

But, however this may be, it seems to be conceded that our 
hero was remarkably successful at the bar. In itself this 
statement is quite credible : as a mere inference from the 
political advancement just alluded to, it would be only tol- 
erable. 

In '35 or '36, he represented Morgan county, and it may be, 
other counties, in the Legislature of the State, which ever 
since has generally manifested strong attachment to his for- 
tunes. 

Soon, however, he was appointed Register at Springfield. 
He resigned the place thus given him, in 1839. 

In the meantime, when under twenty-five years of age, Mr. 
Douglas received a democratic nomination for Congress. In 
a district in which 36,000 votes were cast, the declared major 
ity against him was only five, and it is added, that " a number 
of ballots sufiicient to have changed the result were rejected 
by the canvassers because the name of Mr. Douglas was in- 
correctly spelled." 

Here as well as in the 1840 canvass, we encounter Douglas 
as a stump-speaker. Energy, directness, force, appear to 
have been manifested from the first in his performances as 
orator. His capability of work would also seem to have de- 
veloped largely. 

In the practice, strictly speaking, of the law, Mr. Douglas 
4 



50 THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

is declared to have been notably industrious and notably suc- 
cessful. But of this I can present no very satisfactory dem- 
onstration. 

Of the practice in unreported cases of Mr. Douglas, few 
memorials ajipear to have been made. And now, 

'• So doth the greater glory dim the less," 

there is but little disposition to possess the public of reliable 
and discriminating critical accounts of Douglas as a lawyer. 
We are told, indeed, that " he was noted, among other things, 
for the careful preparation of his cases, and for his tact and 
skill in the examination of witnesses. He never went into 
court with a case until he thoroughly understood it in all its 
bearings. Plis addresses to the jury were generally plain and 
clear statements of the matter of fact, the arguments logical 
and conclusive, and his manner earnest and impressive. He 
rarely failed to enlist the feelings and sympathies of the 
jury."^ But this quite imperfect picture does not satisfy us. 

"While, however, this account of Douglas is unsatisfactory, 
it quite agrees with all the indications furnislied by reported 
cases. 

Lovett V. Nohle ^ is the first reported case in which we find 
the name of Douglas as of counsel. It is followed by People 
V. Mohley^ in Avhich our " State's Attorney" files a well con- 
structed information in the nature of quo ivarranto, raising 
questions as to the authority of appointment and removal of 
clerks in Illinois. 

In these cases, as well as in Miller v. Hbicell,^ lliller v. 

6 Life of Douglas (Memb. West. Bar), 23. 7 ib. 216. 

6 1 Scam. 185. 8 ib. 499. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 51 

Houcke,^ Covcll \. Marhs,^^ Whiteside y. Lee,^^ Spraggins \. 
Hougldon^- Nye v. Wright,^'^ Donnedy v. Bank of IlUnois^^ 
our advocate is successful. 

In the case of Fields v. People,^^ lie is unsuccessful. 
Some of the successes have relation to propositions in the 
law of pleading, some relate to evidence, and some to practice. 
All, so far as they reveal the part performed by Douglas, tes- 
tify in favor of the view of his capacity, for which we are 
indebted to the "Life" by a "Member of the Western Bar." 
Two of the cases mentioned have a special interest. 
In one of them — Fields y. People — Douglas printed an 
argument; but I am not enabled to present his points. JNIr. 
Sheahan tells us, that this "argument was regarded as so con- 
clusive by the parties agreeing with him, that it was published 
in extenso in the papers of that day." ^'^ It is enough to note 
in passing, that the case presented a conflict between the action 
of the Governor and the action of the Senate, and that it was 
part of the movement, in which Douglas took a leading part, 
for a constitutional reorganization of the Supreme Court. 
Spraggins v. Houghton merits a more ample notice- 
In this case, not as an advocate presenting a mere question 
in the interest of a client, but, quite evidently, as a statesman 
advocating well-considered views of public policy, Mr. Doug- 
las assumed the following positions, among others : 

" It was the policy of the government by the Ordinance of 
1787, and by the several acts of Congress for the government 
of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, to encourage 

9 Scam. 501. " lb. 236. 

10 lb 525. 15 2 lb. 80. 

11 lb. 549v 1'' Life, p. 40. See also the reporter's state- 
is 2 Scammon 211, and 2 Scam. 337. ment, 2 Scam. 81. 

13 lb. 222. 



52 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

emigration, hj conferring upon alien inhabitants the right of 
suffrage, and other privileges. Ordinance of loth July, 1787, 
in R. L. 53, 54, permitting alien inhabitants to vote if free- 
holders." 

"Fourthly. 1st. Under the Constititution of the United 
States, each State has the right to prescribe the qualifications 
of its own voters. Const. U. S. Art. 1, § 2 ; Federalist, No. 
52, page 22G; 2 Story's Com. Const. 57 to GG; 12 Cong. Deb. 
Part 1, 1036; Part 4, 42 GG. 

"2d. Each State has exercised this power from the organiza- 
tion of the government. Book of Constitutions, Vermont ; 
page 90, aliens vote and hold office. 

" Constitution of New York ; negroes vote. North Caro- 
lina permits free negroes and aliens to vote. 2 Kent Com. 
Gl ; 2 Story Com. Const. 58 to G5. 

"3d. The naturalization laws have no reference to the elec- 
tive franchise, neither conferring nor restraining it, in this 
country or in England. 1 Blac. Com. titles 'Alien,' 'Den- 
izen,' etc.; 2 Kent Com. Gl; 12 Cong. Deb., Part 4, 424G, 
4247; 4 Harris & McHenry, 340. 

" 4th. A State may confer upon aliens the right to hold real 
estate, to vote, or hold office, etc., without making theip citi- 
zens, or violating the naturalization laws. 2 Kent Com. 60 ; 
R. L. 626; (1) Book of Constitutions, 90. 

" 5th. The contemporaneous exposition of the Constitution 
by its framers, who were members of the Legislature, and by 
the different departments of the government and the universal 
practice under it for more than twenty years, has been, that 
alien inhabitants have a right to vote. Laws of 1819, Act 
regulating elections, of 1st March, § 14, page 93, prescribes the 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 53 

oath of the voter; 'that he has resided in the State six months.' 
No citizenship required; Laws of 1821, 76; same oath, no 
citizenship required; Laws of 1823, 58, §15; same oath, no 
citizenship required; Laws of 1825, 166, penalty for rejecting 
voter after oath taken. Laws of 1826 in R. L. 384 (1), in- 
habitants vote for justices of the peace. 

"Laws of 1829, R. L. 246, 247, §12 (2), oath as to six 
months residence, but citizenship not required. All these acts 
approved by Governors Bond, Coles and Edwards, and the 
iudges of the Supreme Court, sitting as a Council of Revision. 
1 Peters' Cond. R. 316, 317." 

He was successful. The syllabus of the case is in part as 
follows: "Under the statute of the State of Illinois, every 
white male inhabitant, of the age of twenty-one years, who has 
resided in the State six months immediately preceding any 
general election, is entitled to vote at such election." 

Here we may fairly meet the evidence, that while our advo- 
cate, as such, won great and well deserved distinctions, his pro- 
clivities were constantly towards poUtical achievements. 

If, indeed, the aims of Douglas, at the outset, had been merely 
those of a forensic taste and a propensity to strictly forensic 
service, it would be impossible to credit him with due devotion 
to his calling. But the destiny of Douglas was determined by 
the tendency, distinctively political, regarded by the writer as 
the most distinctive character of Douglas, view him in what 
light you will. With reference to such a destiny, the service 
of our hero at the bar and on the bench was quite hai'monious 
with all his purposes and interests. 

Indeed, with due regard to the inevitable obligations of the 
lawyer in America, how can he be indifferent to politics? 



54 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

What right has he to urge the voice of ancient English wis- 
dom as obliging him who serves the law to serve no other 
mistress ? Is he not a citizen, a voter ? If he knows what 
ought to be made known to the public, in respect to things 
political, what right has he to hide his knowledge from the 
people? If he does not know, how dai'es he vote in igno- 
rance ? 

Our lawyers are, and must be, more or less conversant with 
political economy, or with that substitute for it, which parties 
organize to illustrate or to maintain. And so it would have 
been with Stephen Arnold Douglas, even if he had not been 
the destined statesman, whom we here attempt to view in all 
that evidently was contributive to make him what he is and 
what he may become. 

But was the service in the Legislature — was the service as 
register — was the secretarysliip — contributive to make our ad- 
vocate a lawyer worthy of the name ? 

The full discussion of this question would be inappropriate 
in such a work as this. I must, therefore, content myself with 
saying, that I mentioned the facts just alluded to as part of the 
career of Douglas, and with no decided opinion as to their ef- 
fect on his professional capacity. They may have favored that 
capacity — they may have prevented its development. 

And so of the stump sj)eaking. Some men learn the law 
while arguing before the people questions of great moment — 
some men lose their little law and gain no wisdom in its place 
while flying the American eagle. 

Douglas, at one time, we are infoi-med,^''' announced his pur- 
pose of a strict devotion to the law, in such a manner as to in- 

17 Sheaban's Life, 39. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 55 

dicate that lie considered Ms antecedent devotion to political 
discussion and the like, an interference with professional am- 
bition or Avith usefulness in legal practice. He became the 
partner, in 1839 at Springfield (where he had resided since 
1837), of Mr. Urquhart. 

But 1840 was before him, and he had no power to resist it 
when it came. It tore him quite away from his design of 
leaving politics. It played with him as with all others, like 
a storm-wind sporting with the strength of all defences set 
against it. All his prudent resolutions were as nothing when 
it came, to drive him into whirling currents of a vain activity. 

The week of close debate at Jacksonville, the speeches at 
two hundred meetings elsewhere, were not wholly useless, for 
they largely contributed to save the State of Illinois to the 
State policy of the democratic party; but the cabin set on 
wheels passed over all resistance, a triumphant illustration of 
the power, but a melancholy instance of the madness, which 
may sometimes be the product of a false and foolish agitation. 

Douglas went back to his clients, but he was soon appointed 
Secretary of State, and never afterwards has been permitted 
to devote himself to practice as he contemplated in 1839. 

He was not destined long to play the part of advocate in 
the great di-ama of American activity. If he obtained dis- 
tinction at the bar; if we shall find that he was afterwards dis- 
tinguished on the bench ; he still must be regarded as reserved 
for service in the Senate, and, as true hearts now believe, for a 
distinction even higher than his present dignity. 



CHAPTER HI. 



THE JUDGE. 



At the close of a recent speech, Senator Douglas humor- 
ously says : " I should not have much pride of opinion on the 
point of law, but for the fact that you have got into the habit 
of calling me ' Judge ; ' having among my youthful indiscre- 
tions accepted that office, and acquired the title." 

No man can be readier than the writer to appreciate the in- 
discretion that may be expressed in a precocious judgesliip. 
And the reader has abeady been possessed of certain serious 
concessions, touching the too rapid progress to judicial and to 
presidential honors on the part of Douglas. 

But philosophy is often floored by focts. Without the 
slightest disposition to deny that in accepting the judicial 
office, at the age of not quite twenty-eight, Judge Douglas 
showed a "youthful indiscretion," I am forced to own, that 
this discretion did not manifest itself in the judicial conduct 
of our hero. 

Practical ; well grounded, as it seems, in legal principles ; 
expert, it is said, and we have reason to believe, in the art of 
his profession ; having studied in no unprofitable school the 
part of polity which must be part of jurisprudence ; having 

(5G) 



THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 57 

mastered the political economy of the growing State in which 
he was to find the letter and to apply the spirit of laws — for 
such is the judicial function — Douglas certainly ventured, but 
surely he succeeded in his venture, when he solemnly engaged 
to meet the obligations of a judgeship. 

If I have rightly indicated the peculiar duty of a judge — 
if this consists, substantially, in ascertaining what iheforin of 
laws apparently requires and giving force to the inherent sub- 
stance of that form — the service of Judge Douglas as a legis- 
lator and his " first hand knowledge of the people," which if 
not derived was much developed in his " stumping," were 
among the useful preparations of our hero for his duties as a 
judge. 

And so it happens that we must anticipate as we have often 
done in the preceding chapters. We must here take a view 
of Douglas as a legislator in the State of Illinois, Avhich the 
arrangement of our book would seem to hold entirely in re- 
serve. 

We do not, indeed, anticipate, but rather review, so far as 
chronological order is concerned, in glancing — for we can but 
glance — at Douglas as a legislator in the Prairie State. For 
it was on the first Monday of December, 1836, that IMr. 
Douglas took his seat in the Legislature of Illinois. 

Speculation had bewildered Illinois. The last throes of the 
monster of contraction and expansion had apparently been 
felt, but little monsters followed with their mimic agonies, and 
speculative madness ruled the hour. Internal Improvement 
was the rage. The railway fever had set in — the canal inter- 
est still played no indistinguished part in the excitement of 
the times. 



58 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

Mr. Shealian, whom I do not quote but whose account I fol- 
low, gives a vivid picture of extravagance as illustrated at this 
period. He calls the session of 1836-7 the most important 
ever held in Illinois. 

Mr, Douglas met as friends or foes — politically — Richard- 
son, Hardin, Sample, Smith, Calhoun, McClernand, French, 
and Fields, together with that Lincoln who is now opposed to 
him — and well deserves his great distinction — as a presiden- 
tial candidate. The name of Lincoln is not the sole tribute to 
the roll of fame which has been furnished by that backwoods 
Legislature, and the action in which Douglas, Lincoln, Hardin 
and the rest were actors in that Legislature was no child's 
play and no fool's diversion. 

Douglas was, we are informed, personally opposed even 
to such propositions as the following: "1st. That the State 
should select certain leading and most important works, which 
should be owned, constructed, and worked exclusively by the 
State."^ He was personally not in favor of any system to 
Avhich the State was to be a party. Yielding, however, to ne- 
cessity as well as to instruction, he submitted resolutions, look- 
ing to a liberal yet moderate participation by the State in 
works of great utility. He failed, as any other democrat of 
frincipled or constitutional democracy would have failed, to 
tame the madness of the times. But he gave evidence of that 
political consistency, and order, and devotion to ideas, by 
which his career in general is marked, and in which a prefig- 
uration of judicial wisdom is apparent. 

Being chairman of the Committee on Petitions, Mr. Douglas 
yet more clearly mtmifested that blending of political sagacity 

1 Sheahan's Douglas, 29. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 59 

with juridical discernment which may be regarded as the very 
best qualification for the judicial office. 

Henry King desired the Legislature to divorce him from 
his wife Eunice. On the reference to Mr. Douglas, of the 
petition, a report was drawn by the future judge, concluding 
with this resolution : " Resolved, That it is unconstitutional, 
and foreign to the duties of legislation, for the Legislature to 
grant bills of divorce." Mr. Douglas carried through this most 
important resolution, and, says Mr. Sheahan, " that was an end 
to divorces by the Legislature in Illinois." 

On McClernand's resolution, disavowing the correctness of 
the cliarges made by the Governor of Illinois against the ad- 
ministration of Jackson, Douglas had a notable debate with 
the " gallant Hardin." But I do not point to this with confi- 
dence as illustrating the expansion of the mind of Douglas in 
the direction of judicial wisdom — for I do not know what was 
the point of the particular debate referred to. This, however, 
I will say with perfect confidence : "Whatever, for a time, was 
Jackson's darkness, doubt, and groping mode of progress to- 
wards that unequaled system of democracy of which, towaixls 
the last, all recognized him as a new Apostle, reminiscent of 
Jefferson, no man could have been active in defending Jackson 
as our hero was, without becoming more and more acquainted 
with the system of democracy just mentioned. And no man 
could be acquainted thoroughly with such a system, without 
improving whatever in him looked towards capacity for the ju- 
dicial function. 

So, I undertake to say, it must have been with the discus- 
sions of our hero in debate with Hardin on the " stump." 
To hold discourse of "stumping" is not quite agreeable to 



60 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

certain sensitive, poetic-patriotic minds. I do not, as a Yankee 
would express it, "love" the word myself. But we may, 
if the fastidious be here ii-reconcilably at war with what is 
usual, express ourselves in some more chosen language. 

Douglas, then, when he addressed the people in their free 
assemblies, was preparing the capacity, of which as we shall 
see hereafter the reports attest that he had become possessed 
when he became a judge. 

" The first time," says Rev. Mr. Milburn, " I saw Mr. 
Douglas was in June, 1838, standing on the gallery of the 
Mai'ket House, which some of my readers may recollect as 
situate in the middle of the square at Jacksonville. He and 
Colonel John J. Hardin were engaged in canvassing Morgan 
county for Congress. Pie was upon the threshold of that great 
world in which he has since played so prominent a part, and 
was engaged in making one of his earliest stump speeches. 
[There it is again !] I stood and listened to him, surrounded 
by a motley crowd of backwoods farmers and hunters, dressed 
in homespun or deerskin, my boyish breast glowing with ex- 
ultant joy, as he, only ten years my senior, battled so bravely 
for the doctrines of his party with the veteran and accom- 
plished Hardin. True, I had been educated in political 
sentiments opiDOsite to his own, but there was something cap- 
tivating in his manly straightforwardness and uncompromising 
statement of his political principles. He even then showed 
signs of that dexterity in debate, and vehement, impressive 
declamation, of which he has since become such a master. 
He gave the ci'owd the color of his own mood as he inter- 
preted their thoughts and directed their sensibilities. His 
first-hand knowledge of the people, and his power to speak to 



TUE LIFE OF STErHEN A. DOUGLAS. 61 

them in their own language, employing arguments suited to 
their comprehension, sometimes clinching a series of reasons 
by a frontier metaphor which refused to be forgotten, and his 
determined courage, which never shrank from any form of 
difficulty or danger, made him one of the most effective stump- 
orators I have ever heard." ^ 

It is quite evident, that the " determined courage " of our 
hero served him well when he performed the duty of a 
circuit judge. In Mormon times and in the Mormon region, 
Douglas, it would seem, was often called upon to manifest the 
quality in question — once quite notably, in the appointment 
(not quite legal but most happily impromptu) of a Sheriff 
where there was no vacancy, and in assuming martial powers 
(witnessed by no governor's commission) in the room of mere 
judicial functions."^ 

Nor is it less certain that the " first-hand knowledge of the 
people," marked in Douglas by the Rev. Mr. Milburn, and 
the power, marked by the same obsei'ver in our hero, to 
speak to the people in their own language, must have been 
apparent as an excellency in the charges to juries made by 
Douglas on the cii'cuit. 

More than this : the judge, so saith the maxim, is the law 
speaking.** And the law, not in America alone, but — as Judge 
Douglas well observes (in effect) in Penny v. Little ^ — even 
in England, is the people speaking in and through the rites and 
forms of justice. So that in the State of Illinois, the law was 
in effect the people's voice. To be familiar with that voice, 
to be familiar with its modes of expression, to be able to adopt 

2 Ten Years of Preacher Life. ^ Judex est lex loquens. 

3 Sheahan's Life, 50. 6 3 Scam. 304. 



G2 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

its common language, was, in circumstances such as tliose of 
Douglas, to be possessed of the all-penetrating spirit of the 
local legal system, and to be prepared for the intei'pretation 
and the application of the latter. 

I would not be understood as saying, that to every man, or 
even to Douglas in all circumstances, that knowledge of the 
popular proclivities by which Douglas was prepared to be a 
judge, would be a preparation for judicial action. I would 
only say, that, having from the first accepted, not the sham, 
but the reaUty, of that radical democracy which is at the same 
time the only true conservatism in America, and having dili- 
gently studied Blackstone or some other elementary expression 
of English jurisprudence, Douglas, while engaged in legal 
practice as we know he was engaged, was well prepared for 
the judicial office by that intimate acquaintance with the spirit 
of the people, which, if I am right, and if my hero does not 
follow a delusion, is the real and efficient spirit of the law. 

But, on the other hand, there are great cautions to be ob- 
served before agx'eeing that the whole of Douglas' antecedents 
fitted him to be a judge. This is a Voter's Version of the Life 
and Character of Douglas. And we have already seen that 
such a version ought to be discriminating. 

It is doubtless true, that the peculiar tendency of Douglas 
leads him to exalt the sense of popular capacity. Our " Little 
Giant " has within him powers wliich forbid him to become a 
demagogue, in the offensive sense of such a designation. And 
whoever saw him as he stood, defiant, in the presence of ten 
thousand men, transformed by passion, at the instant, into 
quite ten thousand devils, cannot doubt that he is conscious of 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 63 

those po\yers.^ On the other hand, a spice of demagoguery 
may be discernible in some of his performances. So it has 
been with all our statesmen — so it always will be, till perfec- 
tion takes the stump or I'ules the Senate. 

Tendencies of the description recognized in Douglas might 
have led him into most deplorable abuses of judicial power. 
But I cannot find that he abused in any sense the trust con- 
fided to him. 

He was, undoubtedly, forever conscious of the duty Avhich 
requires American judicial action to reflect distinctively Amer- 
ican principles. And of these principles his view was ever 
bi'oad and liberal. But while he understood the duty just 
refeiTcd to, and habitually took the comprehensive view just 
indicated, he had evidently studied philosophically — i. e. prac- 
tically — that important rule of precedent by which the law 
developed in the courts of justice is preserved in its integrity 
and freed from that worst form of legal anarchy, caprice con- 
cealed in ermine. 

Of the legal system which might be regarded as distinct- 
ively American, he has partly indicated his conception in 
these words : 

" The common law is a beautiful system ; containing the 
wisdom and experience of ages. Like the people it ruled and 
protected, it was simple and crude in its infancy, and became 
enlarged, improved, and polished as the nation advanced in 
civilization, virtue, and intelligence. Adapting itself to the 
condition and circumstances of the people, and relying upon 
them for its administration, it necessarily improved as the con- 
dition of the people was elevated. 

« The alluBion is. of course, to the attempted speech at Chicago in the autumn of 1854 



64 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

" Is it to be presumed, then, that our legishiture, in adopt- 
ing tlie common law of England and the British statutes in 
its aid, prior to the fourth of James, intended to exclude all 
the improvements in the common law since that period ? I 
do not wish to be understood as saying, that the act of the 
fourth George II., extending the right of distress to all kinds 
of rent indiscriminately, was an imj^rovement ; but I do say, 
that if we are to be resti'icted to the common law, as it 
was enacted at fourth James, rejecting all modifications and 
improvements which have since been made, by practice and 
statutes, except our own statutes, we will find that system en- 
tirely inapplicable to our present condition, for the simple 
reason that it is more than two hundred years behind the age. 

" Why, then, it may be asked, did our legislature fix the 
fourth James I., instead of the date of the declaration of in- 
dependence, or of the formation of our Constitution, as the 
period for transplanting the common law of England into this 
country ? The history of our own country furnishes the an- 
swer. That Avas the period at which the first territorial 
government was established in America, and Avith it the com- 
mon law of England as it then existed. From that period, 
we must look to American legislation, and the reports of 
American courts for improvements and modifications in the 
common law. In Virginia the right to distrain for ' any rent 
reserved and due upon the demise, lease or contract whatso- 
ever,' was recognized by statute as early as May, 1730. The 
provisions of this statute, like our own, did not confer the 
right of distress ; but recognized its existence, and regulated 
its exercise, in terms which clearly show that it was intended 
to apply indiscriminately to all kinds of rent certain. The 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 65 

district of country north-west of the Ohio River, includiiig the 
present State of Illinois, was then within the territorial limits 
of Virginia, and in 1778 was organized into the county of 
Illinois. In 1783, it was ceded by the State of Virginia to 
the United States; and by the ordinance of the 13th of July, 
1787, was erected into a temtorial Government. That ordi- 
nance contains certain articles of compact between the original 
States and the people in said ten-itory, which articles, it is de- 
claimed, shall forever remain unalterable, unless by common 
consent. In said articles, it is provided, among other things, 
that the inhabitants of said territory shall always be entitled 
to the benefits of judicial proceedings according to the course 
of the common law. Did the parties to this compact intend 
to adopt the common law as it existed in England, before the 
settlement of America, or did they intend to adopt the com- 
mon law as it then existed in this territory, modified and im- 
proved, and adapted to the condition, circumstances, and habits 
of the people, by a long course of American legislation and 
American practice ? The mere statement of the proposition 
furnishes a sufficient answer. It was evidently their intention 
to secure to the inhabitants of the territory, the benefits of 
the common law, as it was then understood and expounded by 
the courts in America."" 

This language, like the indication to be found in Eells v. 
People^ shows a lawyer-like appreciation of the conflict and 
the harmony of laws in our peculiar system. 

In the case last mentioned, the decision in the court of last 
resort was not delivered until after Douglas had resigned his 
judgeship. But the case was tried below before Judge Doug- 

1 Penny v. Liltle, 3 Scammon, 304. 305. 8 4 Scamm. 498 

5 



66 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

las, and the latter must have held in substance propositions 
such as these : 

" The police power of a State embraces the power of regu- 
lating the whole of the internal affairs of the State, in its civil 
and criminal polity. The State of Illinois has power to pre- 
vent the introduction of negro slaves into the State, and to 
punish those of its citizens who introduce them. 

" A State has the right to legislate on the subject of fugitive 
slaves, and that right is not taken away by the legislation of 
Congress on the same subject ; but it seems, the States are 
prohibited from passing any law Avhich may interfere with the 
right of the master to the services of his fugitive slave." 

These propositions form a part of the syllabus in the reported 
case, in which Judge Shields delivered the opinion of the court. 
And we have the right to suppose that they agree in substance 
with the views of Douglas, whose decision was affirmed in the 
reported judgment. 

These and other cases^ prove that Douglas as a judge, ap- 
preciated principles in jurisprudence. "Was he otherwise a 
iudge in the full sense of that word ? 

The first report of a decided case in which Judge Douglas 
delivered the opinion is that of Woodward v. TumhidU^ The 
opinion is short, explicit, strong and clear. It is a case of statu- 
tory construction. 

The next case^^ shows the same characteristics of mind. It 
is a case of statutory construction and of practice. 

Stevens v. Stebbins^^ likewise manifests a plain, straight- 
forward tendency of mind. It is distinctively American. It 

9 See, for instance the body of the opinion in Campbell v. Quintan, 3 Scamm. 288. 

10 3 Scamm. 1. n People v. Town, 3 Scamm. 19. >= 3 Scamm. 25. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 67 

holds that in relation to variances, courts at the present day are 
net confined to the rigid rule of idem sonaiis, but, adopting a 
more liberal and reasonable one, enquii-e whether the variance 
be a material or immaterial one. The close of the opinion is : 
" If there be a material and substantial variance, it is fatal ; 
otherwise, it is not. In the case now under consideration, we 
are of the opinion that the variance between Steven and Stevens 
is entirely immaterial, and consequently the Circuit Court de- 
cided right in permitting the vote to be read in evidence." ^^ 

In Warren v. Nexson^'^ the legal logicalness, clearness, and 
strength, which we have marked already, are apparent. We 
have also here a liberal, Ameiican, and lawyer-like appreciation 
of the rule of precedent. The syllabus, however, does not indi- 
cate all this. It is as follows : " If a plea begins as an answer 
to the whole declaration, and is, in fact, an answer to but part, 
it is bad on demurrer ; but if the plea begins as an answer to 
but part, and, in truth, answers only part, and the plaintiff re- 
plies or demurs, the whole action is discontinued. Yet the 
plaintiff may take judgment by nil dicit, for the part unan- 
swered, after replication filed and issue joined, at any time be- 
fore final judgment, upon payment of costs." ^^ 

13 A decision of like qualities is tliat of Judge Douglas in King v. Thoinpson, 3 
Scamm. 184, in which the syllabus is : "A security for costs in which the Christian 
names of the plaintiff are abbreviated, is valid. " 

" 3 Scamm. 38. 

15 For a hke indication of the characteristics of Judge Douglas as a '"pleader," sec 
Dunn V. Keegin, 3 Scamm, 292. See also Toivnsend v. The People., lb. 326. And 
see Davison v. Bank of Illinois, 4 Scamm. 57. In the same connexion also may be 
read Patteson v. Hood, 3 Scamm. 152 ; Carson v. Merle, 3 Scamm. 168 ; Dowlingy. 
Stewart, lb. 193 ; Gerrish v. Ayres, lb. 245 ; Averill v. Field, lb. 390 ; Fitch v. Pinck- 
ard, 4 Scamm. 69 ; Grubb v. Crane, 4 Scamm. 155 j Gardner v. People, 3 Scamm. 83 
In some of these cases, the indication of Judge Douglas' views is only indirect. In 
one of them he merely assented, and in some his opinion did not harmonize with that 
of the majority. 



68 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

In Gardner v. Peo'ple}^ Mr. Justice Douglas manifests the 
same reliable, simple, natural tendencies of thought. Marty 
matters of mere practice were disposed of, and the following, 
which all my readers will be able to appreciate, is part of the 
opinion : 

" If a juror has made up a decided opinion on the merits of 
the case, either from a personal knowledge of the facts, from 
the statements of witnesses, from the relations of the parties, 
or either of them, or from rumor, and that opinion is positive, 
and not hypothetical, and such as will probably prevent him from 
giving an impartial verdict, the challenge should be allowed. 

" If the opinion be merely of a light and transient charac- 
ter, such as is usually formed by persons in every community, 
upon hearing a current report, and which may be changed by 
the relation of the next person met with, and which does not 
show a conviction of the mind, and a fixed conclusion thereon, 
or if it be hypothetical, the challenge ought not to be allowed ; 
and to ascertain the state of mind of a juror, a full examina- 
tion, if deemed necessary, may be allowed." 

One of the most notable facts about this language is that it 
is, and professes to be, a simple copying of language used by 
Mr. Justice Breese, in Smyth v. Eames.^'' If Mr. Justice 
Douglas had been an absurd pretender, this mere " able copy- 
ing " would not have satisfied his pride. For, then, as now, 
the public interest in the question to be determined was very 
great — and an absurdly ambitious judge would have aimed at 
an original " exfoliation " in this instance. 

The case of Sellers v. The People^^ should be read with 
Gardner's case, just cited. On a fair comparison of the two 

16 3 Scamm. 83. !• lb. 80. 13 lb. 412. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 69 

'opinions of Judge Douglas thus brought into juxtapositioo, 
legal minds will recognize alike the justice of the views sus- 
tained by our jurist, and that of the writer's account of his judi- 
cial tendencies. 

Here we close our view of Douglas as a Judge. 

He was not faultless in that character. Perhaps the people 
would not love him, and perhaps the voter could not trust him, 
had he been a faultless character at any period of his exist- 
ence. Sunday heroes — and I do not say this thing irrever- 
ently — are not for the service of the people in the Senate or 
in the White House. The people would be apt to answer 
Absolute Perfection as a Candidate for the Presidency, as 
Beatrice answered Don Pedro.^^ But be this as it may, our 
hero was not faultless as a judge. He is not faultless as a 
man. He would not, in the present state of things, be very 
human, if he were entirely faultless. 

Seriously, it were idle to deny that certain faults of Douglas 
interfered with his complete performance of Judicial duties. 
But the fairly taken, and as fairly offered, specimens of his 
reported action as a judge which I present to readers, show in 
Douglas such a fitness for the judgeship, such a meeting and 
peformance of judicial duties, such a character in the judicial 
office, as gives warrant of his fitness for yet higher duties, and 
affords security for their performance with a practical, substan- 
tial, and reliable fidelity. 

19 " D. Fe. Will you have me lady ? 

■'Bea. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days : your grace is 
too costly to wear every day." — Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene I. 



THE LEGISLATOR. 



CHAPTER 1. 

THE "member op the LEGISLATURE" AND THE 
"COXGRESSMAN." 

"While treating of the various experiences wlucli consti- 
tuted the pecuUar abiUty of Douglas as a Judge, we glanced 
at his legislative action.^ With this glance we must content 
ourselves. The " Congressman " invites our scrutiny. 

It is not my intention to be elaborate in the account of the 
congressional career of Douglas. The country knows the 
leading features of our hero's legislative life since he made his 
speech for the refunding of the Jackson fine. Whatever may 
have been the nature of his spell, he has been able ever since 
to draw upon his public action the regard of all divisions of the 
people. 

But there is another reason why elaborateness is unnecessa- 
ry in what follows. 

If 

" the child is father to the man,"'— 

if the effect can be determined by the cause — wc know al- 
ready what our hero is and what he must become. Have wc 

1 Ante, p. 57. 
(73) 



74 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

not seen the opening of his career ? Have we not marked his 
self-devotion in his youth to that divinely elevating labor, 
which, having once begun to make him useful in the public 
service, cannot cease to make him worthy of the public con- 
fidence ? 

But if it is unnecessary to be elaborate in the sequel, it may 
prove instructive to accompany our hero through the great 
temptations and enormous difficulties of his life at Wash- 
ington. 

It was in the spring of 1843, that resigning his judgeship, 
to which he had been elected by the Legislature, Feb. 15, 
1841, Judge Douglas accepted his first entirely successful can- 
didacy for the office of Representative at Washington. We 
are told, that he was advised, considering the doubtful chances 
of the election, to retain his judicial office, and resign it only 
in the event of his election. To his credit, he determined 
otherwise.^ 

At the time of his success, and during his service in the 
Lower House at Washington, our legislator was unmarried. 
But his triumph, after the prostrating sickness that succeeded 
the unprecedented canvass which with Mr. Browning had been 
made by Douglas, carried the latter " home again." Not for- 
getting by a stop at Cleveland to express his gratitude for the 
encouragement which had been given to him there, while, ten 
years before, he was wandering towards his destination, he 
hastened back to Canandaigua. An impertinent imagination 
would alone attempt to picture the unutterable pride and joy 
that must have welcomed him. 

Our legislator took to Congress several securities against 

- Sheahan's Life, 55. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 75 

erroneous action, several securities of largeness, liberality, 
American-ness, if I may be suffered thus to coin a word. 

Against mere demagoguery, and for a truly popular, and 
therefore, truly representative career, his whole experience 
was a security. Occasionally — half in earnest, half in that ■ 
often telling sport with the alarmists in which statesmen some- 
times find it pleasant and not in any sense objectionable to in- 
dulge — our legislator might appear a little broad in his appeal 
to known popular preferences. But no demagogue was ever 
taught the lesson of Democracy as Douglas learned it — taking 
it to heart, and illustrating it in his own life, and feeling that 
whatever he had been, whatever he might yet aspire to be, he 
must attribute to democracy. 

We must remember this as we proceed. For else we may 
find our hero more than once alarming us with something 
rather stronger and broader than we had expected. Nice ef- 
fects for little genius — great efiects for great abilities — this is 
the rule that seems to be developed by a careful study of the 
course and character of Douglas. 

1 have spoken of securities for largeness, liberality, a spix-it 
truly American, which Douglas took with him to Washington. 

He partly had them from the first of his experience as legis- 
lator, and they strengthened with his strength as that devel- 
oped in the public service. 

The population of the State to which our legislator has so 
often proved his usefulness and his devotion, was, as we have 
partly seen, derived from many sources. Douglas understood 
these sources and their vai-ious derivatives. The destiny of 
Illinois, like that of many other States, to modify the nation- 
alities of Europe ; or to reproduce their tributes to our popula- 



76 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

tion in the transformation worked by a new scene of action, 
conflict, harmony ; was evidently understood by him from the 
beginning of his course in Illinois. The remnant of the trib- 
ute sent by France to Illinois, the German tribute and the 
Irish tribute, as they were to be developed with the English 
tribute, tended towards the development of the ideas to which 
Douglas was devoted. And the differences of religious faith 
were placed in a strong light before him in that history of Illi- 
nois, to the materials of which his own career so much con- 
tributed. 

A liberal, American regard of these varieties of national 
extraction and of religious belief — a catholic consideration of 
their unavoidable antagonism and their interest to harmonize 
without the sacrifice of principle — has from the first attested 
the fidelity of Douglas to enlightened patriotism and to true 
political philosophy. 

Undoubtedly, this liberality of Douglas, this fidelity on his 
part to the constitution and the laws, this philosophic view 
of the inevitable future of America by which he has been 
marked, w^as due in part to the almost universal tendency of 
naturalization to enlarge the Democratic party. And the 
presence of our hero in the State and National Legislatures 
was undoubtedly largely due to the naturalized citizens of his 
district. 

After he had been in the State Legislature, Douglas, as we 
have already seen, was active in procuring a decision whereby 
the established policy of Illinois was saved from a judicial sen- 
tence of destruction. In the case of Spraggins v. HougJitnn, 
noticed in a former chapter, he defended the established policy 
of Illinois to give the right to vote to every free white male 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 77 

inhabitant above the age of twenty-one years. And the views 
expressed in his capacity as advocate were otherwise avowed, 
proclaimed, and propagated. 

As for the reh'gious views of Douglas either while he was 
a " member of the Legislature " in the State of his adoption, 
or since that time, I have only to say : I do not know them. 
Probably, they were more distinctively political than religious. 
From whatever cause, our public men have frequently dis- 
played religious feeling rather in their tenderness and rever- 
ence towards the conscientious views of others, than in any 
well developed doctrinal professions or even preferences. Of 
the only Christianity apparent in the lives of many statesmen, 
the sole principle would sometimes seem to be : Blessed are 
the people, for they are the source of power. 

This, however, I do not believe of Douglas. He has ever 
known the art of minding his own business, — in other words, 
he has always been capable of silence where he chose not to 
be noisy — and I am not in the least informed with reference 
to his religious views. But I imagine that his creed would 
have such articles as these : All men have a political, because 
they have a natural, right to be or not to be of any given 
church. It is the policy of human laws to free, and so to favor, 
conscientiousness. Beyond the limit of necessity, the State 
should not express as law disputed rules of conduct. Catholic 
and Protestant alike may safely be entrusted with the right to 
vote, and so may even all who own themselves non- Christian. 
No religious test should be permitted. 

Views like these — and I am certain that they are the views 
of Douglas — my imagination here has all the force of absolute 
conviction — fitted Douglas, and they qualify him now, to be 



78 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

the representative of true American ideas. Elevating and re- 
fining in their influence, their simple entertainment opens all 
the mysteries of policy to comprehension. He who is pre- 
cisely right with reference to fundamental interests like those 
alluded to, cannot be long without the key to all the difficulties 
of political economy ; while he who is illiberal in this respect 
can hardly be a statesman worthy of the name. 

A subject in which Illinois had an especial interest was that 
to which our legislator gave his first attention. His first 
speech — I do not call it his maiden speech — there seems no 
fitness in that term when Douglas is in question — always the 
opponent of our hero needed warning such as that which Scott 
addresses to Fitz-James : 

"Now, gallant Saxon! hold thine own — 
No maiden arm is round thee thrown " — 

the first speech of Douglas gave a foretaste of his lasting in- 
terest in practical, important questions. It related to Internal 
Improvements. 

Our Congressman, on the 19th day of December, 1843, in- 
sisted on his motion to refer to a select committee so much of 
the President's message as referred to the improvement of 
western lakes and harbors. 

Mr. Douglas insisted on such a reference, "because the 
question involved impoi'tant interests requiring an accurate 
knowledge of the condition of the country, its navigable 
streams, and the obstructions to be removed. A thorough 
examination of subjects so various, extensive and intricate, 
and requiring so much patient labor and toil, could not be ex- 
pected from those who reside at a great distance. He desired 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 79 

a full, elaborate, and detailed report from those whose local 
positions would stimulate them. Let this be granted, and the 
friends of the measure would be content to leave its policy and 
propriety to the judgment of the House." 

How far deeper insight, greater knowledge of the dangers 
which beset a legislative body in providing for public works, 
in a word, enlarged capacity to deal with the important interest 
to which our legislator gave his first attention, modified the 
views of Douglas as to Internal Improvements, we shall see 
hei-eafter. 

Not in reference to this concern of public policy alone has 
time been useful to our Congressman. He was and is a teach- 
able as well as an instructed politician. He was not " fenced 
in," when he was sent to Washington in '43. 

The speech of Douglas for refunding Jackson's fine de- 
served the thanks of Jackson. And it was not unrewarded. 
Jackson is reported to have thanked our orator in person, and 
to have preserved the speech itself with singular honor. Time 
has had no woi*k to do upon this effort. All its warmth is 
natural, and its extravagance, if any be detected in it, is of 
such an order as is always lawful to the orator who pleads for 
gratitude and worships greatness. 

But when Douglas argues for the famous "54° 40' or a 
fight," there may be a little room to thank the lapse of time 
which has been good to Douglas as it always is to an expand- 
ing genius for affairs. Our hero thus expressed himself in 
1844: 

" It therefore becomes us to put this nation in a state of de- 
fence ; and when we are told that tliis Avill lead to war, all I 
have to say is this : violate no treaty stipulations, nor any 



80 THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

principle of the law of nations ; preserve the honor and integ- 
rity of the countr)', but, at the same time, assert our right to 
the last inch, and then, if war comes, let it come. "We may 
regret the necessity which produced it, but when it does come, 
I would administer to our citizens Hannibal's oath of eternal 
enmity, and not terminate the war until the question was set- 
tled forever. I would blot out the lines on the map which 
now mark our national boundaries on this continent, and make 
the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself." 

Like language was employed by Douglas in his speech on 
Texan Annexation. Thus: 

" Our federal system is admirably adapted to the whole con- 
tinent : and while I would not violate the laws of nations, nor 
treaty stipulations, nor in any manner tarnish the national honor, 
I would exert all legal and honorable means to di-ive Great 
Bi'itain, and the last vestiges of royal authority, from the con- 
tinent of North America, and extend the limits of the Republic 
from ocean to ocean. I would make this an ocean-bound Re- 
public, and have no more disputes about red hues on maps." 

Language such as this may be considered as requu'ing mod- 
eration. Can it be regarded as objectionable as tending to a 
spirit of encroachment ? 

Let no answer be attempted to this question, save with ref- 
erence to the ideas which tlu'oughout the world began the 
work of revolution at the time when Douglas spoke. And 
let no answer be attempted, save with recollection of the 
common tendency of thought, in sti-ong and thoughtful minds, 
at that time, with reference to the apparent destiny of free 
opinions in America. 



THE LIFE OF STEPIIEX A. DOUGLAS. 81 

It was not Douglas first, or Douglas only, to whom a patri- 
otic prophecy was ever whispering, that 

'■The whole boundless continent is ours! "' 

Tiie i)eople fully felt, and still the people fully feel, the sen- 
timent of Douglas in the language under criticism, if that 
language be interpreted upon the supposition that the speaker 
gave expression to the utmost that he meant. In 1852, it 
seemed to many that our legislator had meant a little more 
than he expressed. It then appeared to many that the " Little . 
Giant" had been not only willing that irregularity should 
throttle Cuban oppression and misrule, but that his influence 
should hasten the deliverance of Cuba through the filibusters. 

Willingness to see the unavoidable accomplished suddenly, 
may still appear to be the animus of Douglas at the time 
alluded to, but we shall find hereafter reason to conclude that 
want of moderation is the only charge that can be brought 
with firmness and with confidence against the Oregon and 
Texas speeches of our legislator. 

"When our hero entered Congress, he "found upon the stat- 
ute-book the evidence of a policy to adjust the slavery question 
and avoid sectional agitation by a geographical line drawn 
across the continent, separating free territory from slave ter- 
ritory." ^ He " examined the question when the proposition 
was made for the annexation of Texas in 1845, and though 
.... unable to vindicate the policy of a geographical line, 

not only acquiesced in and supported the measure 

then, but .... did it with the avowed purpose of continuing 

3 Speech of March 22, 1858. 



82 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

that line to the Pacific Ocean, so soon as -vve should acquire 
that territory." ^ 

Such is the assurance given by Douglas, and no student of 
his life can fairly doubt his statement that he merely acquiesced 
in an established policy, even when he voted for extending the 
geographical line. He voted, so he tells us. out of the consider- 
ation " that the policy had its origin in patriotic motives, in 
fraternal feeling, in that brotherly affection which ought to 
animate all the citizens of a common country ; and that for the 
sake of peace, and harmony, and concord, we ought to adhere 
to and preserve that policy." ^ 

The impromptu war speech of our hero^ in response to Mr. 
Delano was masterly. It was not moderate — who could be 
Inoderate when openly elected representatives openly de- 
nounced the war in which our country was engaged as " un- 
holy, unrighteous, and damnable ? " When, on the one hand, 
even venerable Adams " endorsed " and " approved " such 
language — when, on the other hand, the country was on fire 
with patriotic expectation — when the weakness and the wick- 
edness of Mexico had opened an apparent way to the expan- 
sion of our interests and the development and application of 
our principles — could there be moderation in the speech of 
Douglas ? Have the consequences of that war been evil ? Is 
the difficulty of the present time its evil consequence ? Are 
we so poor and feeble, that we shrink from the encounter with 
the questions due to our victorious chastisement of Mexican 
insolence, and our triumphant annexation of Mexican territo- 
ry ? Are our liberties so worthless that we cannot meet for 
them and for their permanence the perils of the present conflict 

« Speech of March 22, 1858. » ib. 6 DeUvered May 13, 1846. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 83 

of ideas ? Even if a conflict bloodier than any known to his- 
tory should follow that mere moral conflict in which w^e are 
now engaged, is he a worthy citizen, is he a real patriot, is he 
a veritable democrat, who even now can mourn the war with 
Mexico ? 

The speech of Douglas, set to martial music by the times in 
which it sounded to the onset, boldly challenged all the forms 
of opposition to the cause in which it did such service. It will 
stand in history as part of the achievements of our arms in 
Mexico — for arms are nothing if the soldier be not cheered to 
battle. 

It is curious to study how the first experiences of Douglas 
as a legislator opened the bright pathway for his subsequent 
career. 

The House having befoi'e it the substance of Mr. Douglas' 
amendment to the Wilmot proviso, Mr. Douglas said, that "he 
believed it was well known that he was against the incorpora- 
tion of the Wilmot proviso into this bill.' And in the second 
place, that if it should be thought best that the question in re- 
gard to the character of new territory to be received thereafter 
into the Union should be settled now, the most proper arrange- 
ment would be the adoption of the Missouri Compromise Line. 
As the issue now seemed, however, to be on the adoption or 
the rejection of the Wilmot proviso, he should give a few rea- 
sons why he should vote against it. He believed that this was 
not the proper time for any action on that subject." 

It is evident, that there was conflict in the mind of Douglas 

7 The Wilmot proviso is too well known to require description. It prOTided in ef- 
fect that all newly acquired territories should be non-slaveholding. 



84 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

as to which of two opinions ought to be adopted — whether it 
should be beheved that Congress ought to act upon the subject 
of slavery in the territories, or whether the right of acting on 
that subject was to be attributed to the people of the territory. 
How he was inclined to choose between these contending 
ideas, may be indicated by the sentences which follow : 

" If Congress should insert no prohibition of slavery in the 
territorial government, the people of the territory when it be- 
came a State or States, could decide for themselves whether 
slavery should or should not exist within their boundaries. 
If they chose to prohibit it, and inserted such a feature in their 
constitution, that constitution must also come before Congress 
for revision, and Congress might assent or dissent to the pro- 
vision. Then the question would he fairly uj), and that would 
be another- opportunity of passing upon it, for all future time." 

I have not imitated those historians of Douglas who appear 
to be afraid that this speech of our " Little Giant " may re- 
veal that he is not a demi-god. 

If Jefferson and Jackson, Clay and "Webster, had to learn 
the way to certainty and truth through doubt and error, shall 
we presume to make our "Little Giant" an omniscience, an 
inflUlibility ? 

The doctrine noio to be accepted, it is easy to define. The 
territorial condition, when it is that of the real immigrant — 
when it shows the presence of a people, hona fide — is now 
quite evidently far more qualified to furnish its own laws of 
development than Congress for a long time has been, and than 
Congress ever will again become. But the reverence of 
Douglas for the fathers did not suffer him to see this truth, 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. ,85 

when he delivered the hasty speech,® of which a few sentences 
ha\e been presented to the reader. Was he censurable, in 
this respect? 

A writer of a genius so complete that we must mourn to 
find it sometimes in the service of extreme opinions, lately 
wrote : " After all that is said about independent thought, 
isn't the fact, that a just and good soul has thus or thus be- 
lieved, a more respectable argument than many that are often 
adduced ? If it be not, more's the pity — since two-thirds of 
the faith in the world is built on no better foundation." 

It was only after this very same great genius had contrib- 
uted so largely — so unhappily — to agitate the passions and to 
blind or dazzle the- perceptions of the people in respect to 
slavery, that Douglas ventured fully to accept the mission of 
propagating, planting, and defending a new development of the 
principle of popular discretion, or, in other woi'ds, of sover- 
eignty. Who will not honor hesitation when it has its source 
in reverence ? 

8 Congressional Globe, and Appendix, 1847, p. 440. Mr. Douglas began by desiring 
'■ to occupy a portion of the brief space remaining,'' etc. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SENATOR. — FROM '47 TO '54. 

As our history advances, the availability of mere allusion 
and of simple reference increases. 

Who is now to learn that, having been elected several times 
as " Representative in Congress," Douglas was a Senator be- 
fore he reached the age of thirty -four ? Who is to learn that 
as if in mere anticipation of his Senatorial career, he had been 
charged as representative with the same committee duty which 
distinguishes his name to-day far more than all the rest of his 
career ? Who needs to be informed that " as chairman of the 
Committee on Territories, first in the House and afterward in 
the Senate, he reported and carried through the bills organiz- 
ing the Territories of Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah, 
Washington, Kanzas, and Nebraska, and also the bills for the 
admission into the Union of the States of Iowa, Wisconsin, 
California, Minnesota, and Oregon ? " ^ 

The facts enumerated seem enough to fill the glory of that 
pale-faced emigrant, who tottered towards Winchester in 1833 
to find employment as a teacher. Let fanatics question — let 

1 Living Representative Men, 221. 
(8G) 



THE LIFE OF SLEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 87 

aesthetics sneer — the glory of a life like that which rose from 
a beginning such as we have contemplated makes it quite im- 
possible for fortune to play tyrant with our hero. Be he 
chosen or rejected next November, he has been elected to a 
place in history which the severest censure of his quite un- 
questionable errors cannot rob of that true lustre found in real 
greatness. 

In addition to the services performed by Douglas in Com- 
mittee, and the proofs of his administrative powers thus at- 
tested, oratory worthy of the Senate has conferred upon the 
history of that same anxious emigrant to Illinois a lasting and 
an enviable fame. 

Nor, though the gradual development of his so often ridi- 
culed but never to become ridiculous " Great Principle," in 
Territorial conditions, has engaged so much of the ability of 
Douglas, has our Senator been a one-ideaed Legislator. 

Not alone the Government of Ten-itories within the Union, 
but the honorable gain of regions not a part of our original 
domain, has been an object of the patriotic labors by which 
Douglas is distinguished. "We have seen already something 
of the Douglas tendency in this behalf. 

And here the duty of a voter calls upon me to acknowledge 
that there have been times when greater moderation would 
have added to the force of argument, and taken from the dan- 
ger of suggestion, in the speeches of our Senator. There was, 
or seemed to be some reason, in 1852, to fear that Douglas 
had not duly frowned upon unlawful movements looking to- 
wards Cuba. Frankly, I conceive, that Douglas did not al- 
ways thoroughly consider oratoric duty when he spoke of ter- 
ritorial expansion. In the main, he aimed at that which all 



88 THE LIFE OF STEPnEK A. DOUGLAS. 

just thinkers will approve. To him, the value of our institu- 
tions was forever placed above the reach of doubt. " How 
am I what I am " — he might have asked — " but through the 
value of those institutions ? Douglas, in the Senate, once 
went westward, weak, unfriended, and moneyless. Other in- 
stitutions might have given me a patron and a place — the in- 
stitutions of this land instead of the placeman's patron have 
given me the people, and enabled me to feel that in the people's 
thorough confidence is the most honorable dignity and the most 
valuable place. In all that crowns my name with reputation, 
in tiie offices which I have held, in the great trust confided to 
me now, appears the value of the democratic principle." And 
he who could have used such language may be well excused 
if he has not looked frowningly enough on movements antici- 
pating time in the attempt to join that Cuba which is natural- 
ly part of our domain to our expanding territory. At least, 
such language as the following has given us the right to acquit 
Douglas of any serious defect of duty in respect to the matter 
now under consideration : 

" This is a goverument of law. Let us stand by the laws so long as 
they stand upon the statute book, and execute them faithfully, whether 
we like or dislike them. 

" Sir, I have no fancy for this system of filibustering. I believe its 
tendency is to defeat the very object in view, to wit, the extension of 
the area of freedom and the American flag. The President avows that 
his opposition to it is because it prevents him from carrying out a line 
of policy that would absorb Nicaragua and the countries against which 
these expeditions are fitted out. I do not know that I should dissent 
fiom the President in that object. I would like to see the boundaries 
of this Republic extended gradually and steadily as fast as we can 
Americanize the countries we acquire, and make their inhabitants loyal 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 89 

American citizens when we get them. Faster than that I would not de- 
sire to go." '^ 

It may seem that the anti-British oration of Mr. Douglas is 
not exactly in the Christian spirit. But was it not true that 
" England does not love us ;" did it not seem true " that she 
cannot love us ;" was it not undeniable that " we do not love 
her either?" Douglas, whose language I have just partly 
quoted, believed that he spoke truth in saying this and more.^ 
Nor can we disagree with him unqualifiedly. We may con- 
sider that in literature, England has begun to be more liberal 
towards America — we may consider that our American develop- 
ment of English thought, combining, as it does, the tributes of 
the lively, versatile, and yet substantial Irish, of the humanic, 

- Speech in the Senate, January 7, 1858. See also the speech in which Douglas 
pronounces our territorial expansion as certain as the continuance of the republic, 
but adds : " Sir, I am not desirous of hastening the day. I am not impatient of the 
time when it shall be realized. I do not wish to give any additional impetus to our 
progress. We are going fast enough. But I wish our policy, our laws, our institu- 
tions, should keep up with the advance in science, in the mechanic arts, in agriculture, 
and in every thing that tends to make us a great and powerful nation. Let us look 
the future in the face, and let us prepare to meet that which cannot be avoided. 
Ilunce, I was unwilling to adopt that clause in the treaty guaranteeing that neither 
party would ever annex, colonize, or occupy any portion of Central America." Speech 
of March 10, 1853. 

2 " I cannot go as far as the Senator from South Carolina. I cannot recognize Eng- 
land as our mother. If so, she is, and ever has been a cruel and unnatural mother. 
I do not find the evidence of her affection in her watchfulness over our infancy, nor 
in her joy and pride at our ever-blooming prosperity and swelling power, since we as- 
sumed an independent position. 

" The proposition is not historically true. Our ancestry were not all of English 
origin. They were of Scotch, Irish, German, French, and of Norman descent, as 
well as English. In short, we inherit from every branch of the Caucasian race. It 
has been our aim and policy to profit by their example — to reject their errors and 
follies — and to retain, imitate, cultivate, perpetuate all that was valuable and desira- 
ble. So far as any portion of the credit may be due to England and to Englishmen — 
and much of it is — let it be freely awarded and recorded in her ancient archives, 
which seem to have been long since forgotten by her, and the memory of which her 
present policy towards us is not well calculated to revive."' Speech of March 17, 
1853 



90 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

philosophical, trust\voi-thy German, and of its other known con- 
stituents, is teaching England her long-needed lesson — we may 
hope for peace and even for a hearty friendship with the Eng- 
lish people — but we must agree in substance, even now, with 
all that Douglas said a little more than seven years ago. And 
England must do justice to the country whence so large a trib- 
ute is derived to our own population ere, with real warmth, we 
take the pledge of friendship with the British nationality. 
Some of our public men have apjjarently been of Mickey 
Free's opinion, when he sung : 

" It's little for glory I care ; 
Sure, renown is only a fable." 

But the whole weight of authority — the testimony of na- 
tional behavior and the solemn judgment of the juiists here 
agreeing — is that " the glory of a nation is intimately connect- 
ed with its power, and indeed, forms a considerable part of it.""* 

Of this opinion Mr. Douglas, fairly tried with reference to 
all that we have seen of him in this review of his career, ap- 
proves himself. Believing in him as, some years ago, I did 
not dream of finding reason to believe in him, I close my 
glance at his relation to our intercourse with other nations, by 
submitting that our hero, as a legislator in the period here ex- 
amined, as well as in the whole of his career since his eclipse,^ 
has understood the real glory of America, and nobly labored 
to promote that interest of nations. 

4 " It is this brilliant advantage ttiat procures it the esteem of other nations, and 
renders it respectable to its neighbors. A nation whose reputation is well established 
— especially one whose glory is illustrious — is courted by all sovereigns : they desire 
its friendship, and are afraid of offending it. Its friends, and those who wish to be- 
come so, favor its enterprises, and those who envy its prosperity are afraid to show 
their ill-will." Vattel, Law of Nations, B. I., ch. 15. 

6 Ante, p. 12. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 91 

By the glory of America, the writer means that " true glory 
which Vattel defines as consisting in '* the favorable opinion of 
men of wisdom and discernment;" which is acquired not by 
a spirit of unscrupulous aggrandizement, but " by the virtues 
or good qualities of the head and the heart, and by great ac- 
tions which are the fruit of those virtues." Read with care 
the early history of Douglas. Ascertain to what in the be- 
binning of his wonderful career he devoted what he evidently 
then regarded as his destiny. Consider what conceivable in- 
terest he had at that important period to choose to be a dema- 
gogue rather than a democrat. Examine with the utmost care 
all recent exhibitions of the ripened tendencies of Douglas. 
As to the interval between the periods thus brought together, 
scrutinize, with even an unfriendly scrutiny, the words, the 
bearing, all that has been known and all that could be fairly 
thought of Douglas. The result is certain. You must own, 
that the Jacksonian boy has imitated Jackson in the substance 
of his conduct ; and as the character of Jackson, certainly no 
faultless character, has long since passed into the constellation of 
the names in Avhich all real lovers of the real glory of Amer- 
ica find objects of exalted contemplation, so will the name of 
Douglas be an object of like contemplation in the years to come. 

With reference to the domestic law of nations, to internal 
polity, to what is often called political economy, the action of 
our legislator was, with one or two exceptions, perfectly har- 
monious with right, not only in reality but in appearance. 

Eai'ly in the Senatorial career of Douglas, he again directed 
his attention to Internal Improvements. 

Ml". Sheahan — whom I quote with pleasure, and whose book, 



92 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

although it does not answer the design of this volume, I com- 
mend to voters — writes : 

" Mr. Douglas, during his entire political life, has agreed with the 
Democratic party in resisting any general system of internal improve- 
ments by the federal government Upon some points, 

however, such as the improvements of rivers and harbors, he has had 
opinions somewhat peculiar. He has endeavored to discriminate be- 
tween those works which were essential to the protection of commerce 
and the improvement of the navigable waters of the country, and those 
other works asked for by parties having local interests to serve, and de- 
sirous to promote them at the expense of the federal treasury. Mr. 
Douglas voted pretty generally for all the River and Harbor Appropria- 
tion Bills, always protesting against such items as were included in them 
that did not come up to his idea of justice or propriety." 

Mr. Douglas felt authorized, in 1854, to "repudiate as un- 
reasonable and unjust, all injui-ious discrimination predicated 
upon salt water'and tidal arguments, and to insist that if the 
power of Congress to protect navigation has any existence in 
the Constitution, it reaches every portion of this Union where 
the water is in fact navigable, and only ceases where the fact 
fails to exist." '^ Justly reasoning his way to this conclusion, 
he proposed a system which I have not space to bring before 
the reader, but which well attests the practicalness and relia- 
bleness which from the beginning of this history we have re- 
marked as a distinction of the character we are contemplating. 

Equally in harmony with the known doctrines of the dem- 
ocratic party have been all the doctrines of Mr. Douglas 
when distinctly, clearly, and definitively stated and added by 
him to what we may designate as the body of his well-consid- 
ered views. 

Letter of Jan. 22, '51, to Gen. Matteson. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 93 

Even the doctrine as to Territorial Discretion, Sovereignty, 
or Self-Government, the views of Douglas as he came to en- 
tertain them in the year 1854, and as he has explained them 
in his speech of last May, may be regarded as in harmony 
with settled democi'atic constitutional ideas. 

For athough the doctrine of Judge Douglas in the instance 
just alluded to presents some features which may be consid- 
ered not yet familiar to the common mind, its substance is 
and must be democratic doctrine. 

It is easy to establish this position. For the purposes of 
another work, the wi'iter has elaborated what appears to him 
a statement equally of democratic doctrine and of American 
first principles of polity — and with the reader's leave, the fol- 
lowing extract may serve our present purposes : 

" That the question should be seriously entertained, whether the 
people of the territories have the moral and should have the legal right 
to imitate the people of the states in making their own laws, must need 
some explanation. Territorial conditions must peculiarly require the 
nearness of the power governing to the people governed. Territorial 
interests peculiarly secure the care, the discrimination, by which all 
governmental power should be marked. Wherever but a single, honest 
family of emigrants selects its future home, intending in good faith 
to abide by that selection, we have a community which has the interest, 
if not the capacity, to make good laws for governing its members. 
Congress may have a superior capacity to govern that family as it ought 
to be governed. But the interest of the emigrant family to make good 
laws for its own government is evidently greater than the interest of 
Congress to provide good laws for the government of that family. For 
Congress is a body, formed of members representing chiefly interests in 
local districts, which have no immediate concern with territorial condi- 
tions. Congress is, moreover, constituted so that members feel the 
force of opinion in their respective districts rather than the force of 



94 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

opinion in the emigrant community of territories. The interest of 
Congress is but the aggregate of the interest of members of Congress. 
The interest of individual members of Congress has been shown to be 
remote from the interest of the emigrant family in territories. It fol- 
lows, that the interest of 'Congress to govern territorial communities as 
they ought to be governed is only a remote interest — inferior, at least, 
to the interest of the territorial community to be well governed. 

" If such is a fair statement with reference to the interest of a single 
family in a territory, it will be strengthened by supposing the presence 
of several families in the territory. A common concern will soon 
unite several families, if they can have the necessary communication 
with each other. In that common concern, we have an interest to sub- 
ject the developing community to the government of good laws. The 
community, in other words, has an interest to subject itself to good 
laws. And this interest grows with the growth of the community. 
Else, the whole fabric of our government is false. Else, self-govern- 
ment is a delusion everywhere and under every constitution. 

" I have thus far spoken only of the interest of the community. This, 
we have sufficiently observed, is an interest to provide itself with 
good laws. 

" Now, let us look into the capacity of the infant community to gov- 
ern itself wisely and efiSciently. 

'• I have conceded, that a superior capacity to govern the territory 
nmy reside in Congress. But we must be guarded in making any such 
concession. 

" Congress never was, and probably never will be, in fact, so consti- 
tuted as to have, in fact, the supposed superior capacity. But we may 
imaijine a Congress, which if it ever came to be a reality, would have 
the supposed superior capacity. 

" In practice. Congress has apparently conceded the inferiority of its 
capacity. Except as it dealt with well settled questions of policy, or 
questions supposed to be well settled, it has frequently in effect referred 
the government of the territorial community to that community itself. 

" It is to be observed, however, that in supposing in the territorial 
community a superior capacity, we must suppose an honest, fair purpose 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 95 

on the part of members of the community to develop the community 
into a state capable of self-government. There must be no supposition 
of Emigrant Aid Societies, interposing to form the State. There must be 
no supposition of Border Ruffianism invading the territory, to take 
violent or fraudulent possession of the infant government. That there 
has been such an interposition of Emigrant Aid Societies and such an 
invasion of Border Ruffianism, is little to the purpose. The facts 
alluded to were the forced fruits of fanaticism. And at last the peo- 
ple of the territory here alluded to, rebuked fanaticism, and recovered 
their invaded rights. We have the right to suppose the presence in the 
territory of a population, honestly and fairly purposing to build a state 
on fit foundations. So supposing, we may well assert, in behalf of such 
a population, a capacity to govern itself far better than it could be 
governed by Congress. 

" Thus we have alike the interest and the capacity of self-govern- 
ment in territorial communities." 

It may be urged, however, that the territories, "purchased 
by the common blood and treasure of the Union," ought to be 
developed only into such a statehood as the interests of other 
States determine. Douglas here Avould answer that if a re- 
publican development freely and fairly take place in any ter- 
ritory, no external interest can really be hostile to that devel- 
opment — that the interest of the States already in the Union 
really require only that the people of each territory should be 
left perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions in 
their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United 
States. 

And here the body of the democratic party, and no incon- 
siderable number of the citizens Avho mean to vote for Lincoln, 
are in harmony with Douglas.^ Whether he is right or wrong 
— I think that he is wrong — in holding that while Congress 

r See an article in Cincinnati Commercial, July 26. 1860. 



96 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

may constitutionally confei', it cannot constitutionally exercise, 
the powers which his system would refer to territorial legisla- 
tures, does not seem important. For, if it be evident that the 
superior interest and the superior capacity which I have sup- 
posed do really exist in the territorial legislature, principles of 
government distinctively American require that Congress should 
not intervene, with its inferior interest and its inferior capacity. 
And so, without determining to take or to reject the utmost of 
the Douglas doctrines, democrats in general agree in substance 
with those doctrines. 

Wherefore, then, did the writer in the introduction point to 
the time between the introduction of the Kanzas bill and the 
twenty-second day of March, 1858, as a time of eclipse to 
Douglas ? 

Before directly answering, I beg the reader to observe that 
the supposed eclipse does not include the action of our Senator 
in 1850. The origination of large part of the adjustment 
then attempted, and especially of that relating to the territo- 
ries, was the work of Douglas. And he proved his worthiness 
to act with Clay and Webster, and to be regarded as in impar- 
tial history he must appear, namely, as a truly patriotic states- 
man, by supporting all the measures then adopted. 

It was in the Kanzas act, and in that act in the defect of 
safeguards to the due population of the territory, and to the 
due freedom of the people emigrating in good faith to Kanzas, 
that the glory of our Senator suffered the supposed eclipse. 

I have already indicated the important misconception of the 
purposes of Douglas and of his good faith, into which the 
writer was led by perception of the defect just mentioned, and a 
somewhat excited observation of the subsequent behavior of 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A, DOUGLAS. 97 

our Statesman. I have also indicated my belief that that sub- 
sequent behavior, though explained and .perhaps excused by 
the action of Douglas in 1857-8, was not entirely free from 
blame. And now without discussing worn out questions — 
taking it for granted that all readers know the bloody history 
enacted on the plains of Kanzas, and the shameful history en- 
acted at the seat of federal administration — I will only say, 
that Douglas, having frequent opportunities to speak certain 
needful words for liberty and right in Kanzas, hesitated to ex 
press them, and too long postponed that utterance of them by 
which his glory was so perfectly restored in 'oS. 

Why did he hesitate ? 

His views of slavery were national as well as rational. He 
did not, indeed, think as a distinguished thinker and true pa- 
triot — Mr. Stephens of Georgia — now appears to think. 
That statesman lately wrote : 

" The times, as you intimate, do indeed portend evil. But I have no 
fears for the institution of slavery, either in the Union or out of it, if 
our people are but true to themselves ; true, stable, and loyal to fixed 
principles and settled policy ; and if they are not thus true, I have 
little hope of any thing good, whether the present Union lasts or a new 
one be formed. There is, in my judgment, nothing to fear from the 
' irrepressible conflict,' of which we hear so much. Slavery rests up- 
on great truths, which can never be successfully assailed by reason or 
argument. It has grown stronger in the minds of men the more it hae 
been discussed, and it will still grow stronger as the discussion proceeds, 
and time rolls on. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail. We have 
only to maintain the truth with firmness, and wield it aright. Our sys- 
tem rests upon an impregnable basis, that can and will defy all assaults 
from without. My greatest apprehension is from causes within — there 
lies the greatest danger. We have ^own luxuriant in the exuberances 
of our well-being and imparalleled prosperity." 
7 



98 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

No man can read this language, with due respect I'or its 
author, and with recollection of theories which have been lately 
advocated as to races, without perceiving that the anti-slavery 
fanatic will have rare work to do before accomplishing the ut- 
most of his expectations. But although our hero had, in con- 
sequence of his first marriage,^ narrowly escaped becoming a 
slaveholder, and although his children were — perhaps are — 
slaveholders,^ he probably regarded slavery — he probably re- 
gards it now — as jurists have regarded it. 

Jurists have considered slavery as always a departure from tlie 
law of nature, and as generally violative of that law. But hold- 
ing property in man to be exceptional, abnormal, and in general 
evil, jurists have regarded slavery as capable of having legal 
sanction, and as perfectly entitled to judicial recognition, where, 
no matter what its origin, it has become established, and the 
sovereign decides, in his discretion, that its abolition is im- 
politic. 

Supposing Douglas to have so regarded slavery, he might 
have spoken out for Kanzas more than once. He did not. 
And he failed in duty when he did not. He went into eclipse 
when he so failed in duty. 

8 Mr. Douglas was married, April 7, 1847, to Miss Martha D. Martin, daughter of 
Col. Kobert Martin, of Rockingham Co., N. C. 

9 " In 1847, on the day after bis marriage, Colonel Martin placed in Mr. Douglas' 
hands a sealed package of papers. Upon an examination of these papers, Mr. Doug- 
las found among them a deed of certain plantations, including the .servants upon 
them, in the State of Mississippi, which deed vested the title to both lands and ser- 
vants in him absolutely. He at once, without one moment's hesitation, sought Colonel 
Martin and returned him the deed, stating that while he was no abolitionist, and 
had no sympathy with them in their wild schemes and ultra views respecting slavery, 
yet he was a northern man by birth, education, and residence, and was totally ig- 
norant of that description of property, apd as ignorant of the manner and rules by 
■which it should be governed, and was therefore wholly incompetent," etc. Shea- 
han's Life, 435. See p. 436 for an account of the final disposition of the slaves- 



CHAPTER in. 

THE SENATOR — FROM '54 TO '60. 

It is not pleasant to dwell upon the concession made at the 
close of our last chapter. 

For it was concession and not accusation, on the writer's 
part, which described the character of Douglas as in eclipse 
from '54 to '58. The author is so heartily and thoroughly 
assured of the general fidelity of our hero to the principles, 
with reference to which even in youth he began to recognize 
a certain set of duties as his destiny, that every detected fault 
in Douglas must be mentioned in this volume, not as charge 
but as admission. 

I repeat, it is not pleasant to dwell on the concession here 
referred to. He is no true patriot, who, having carefully ex- 
amined the career of Douglas, loves to dAvell upon the evi- 
dence of the supposed eclipse. 

We pass, then, to the scene in which the hidden glory was 
to reappear. 

The twenty-second day of March, 1858, should be com- 
memorated by the friends of Douglas as the 8th of January, 
1815, is commemorated by the friends of Jackson. 

Such a statement may be looked upon as mere extravagance 
(99) 



100 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

— but it is the result of an attentive study of the life and 
character which we are contemplating. 

In the first place, it is not extravagant to say that Stephen 
Arnold Douglas will be honored after the close of his active 
participation in affairs — that is to say, perhaps, after he shall 
have' ceased to live — as Andrew Jackson was honored after 
he had closed his active public service. As even those who 
were whigs with democratic antecedents now speak of Jackson 
with a species of veneration, so even those whigs of the pres- 
ent day who leave the democratic party out of opposition to 
tlie " Little Giant " will hereafter speak of Douglas with a 
species of veneration. 

And in the second place, it certainly is not extravagant to 
look on the scene in the Senate on the 22d day of March, 
1858, as the day of the restored and permanent renown of 
Douglas. 

Picture to yourself the array of the Administration, the 
fanatic advocates of novel doctrines of protection, the fanatic 
advocates of novel doctrines of prohibition, the expectant 
people, the awaiting Christian world, when Douglas spoke 
against that mockery of democratic principle, the proposition 
to admit the pretended State of Kanzas under the false Le- 
compton Constitution. When the hour of Douglas comes, 
masses crowd the Senate galleries, " the lobbies, the stairways, 
and the anterooms." The writers tell us that at " five min- 
utes after five the galleries were empty ; in five minutes more 
they were filled with a brilliant, fashionable, and intelligent 
array. In the gentlemen's gallery the people were literally 
walking on each other. They formed a human pyramid 



THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. lOl 

reaching up to the windows, on the inside sills of which some 
persons were fortunate enough to be lifted." 

When our Senator appears, applause announces him. In 
liis calm opening, expressing with simplicity the apprehension 
that his strength of body may prove insufficient for the task 
before him, we begin to see what he conceived to be the great- 
ness of that task, and we listen with an expectation never 
given but to greatness. Sentence after sentence warrants and 
exalts the expectation raised by the first utterance of this im- 
mortal speech. Fact follows fact in the statement, vindication 
after vindication follows in the ever warming argument devel- 
oped out of that arrangement of related facts. "Whoever has 
doubted Douglas or denounced him, must now believe in his 
fidelity to his peculiar view of right, and must in that peculiar 
view of right discern an object of surpassing interest. The 
life of our American democracy seems breathing in this orator 
for constitutional interests. Hear him but a little : 

" It matters not whether this Constitution is to be the permanent 
fundamental law of Kanzas, or is to last only a day, or a month, or a 
year 5 because, if it is not their act and deed, you have no right to 
force it upon them for a single day. If you have the power to force it 
upon this people for one day, you may do it for a year, for ten years, 
or permanently. The principle involved is the same. It is as much a 
violation of fundamental principle, a violation of popular sovereignty, 
a violation of the Constitution of the United States, to force a state 
Constitution on an unwilling people for a day, as it is for a year or lor 
a longer time. When you set the example of violating the fundamental 
principles of free government, even for a short period, you have made a 
precedent that will enable unscrupulous men in future times, under 
high partisan excitement, to subvert all the other great principles upon 
which our institutions rest. 

" But, sir, is it true that this Constitution may be changed imme- 



102 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

diately by the people of Kanzas ? The President of the United States 
tells us that the people can make and unmake Constitutions at pleas- 
ure ; that the people have no right to tie their own hands and prohibit 
a change of the Constitution until 1864, or any other period ; that the 
right of change always exists, and that the change may be made by 
the people at any time in their own way, at pleasure, by the consent of 
the Legislature. I do not agree that the people cannot tie their own 
hands. I hold that a Constitution is a social compact between all the 
people of the state that adopts it ; between each man in the state, and 
every other man ; binding upon them all ; and they have a right to 
say it shall only be changed at a particular time and in a particular 
manner, and then only after such and such periods of deliberation. 
Not only have they a right to do this, but it is wise that the funda- 
mental law should have some stability, some permanency, and not be 
liable to fluctuation and change by every ebullition of passion." 

Is it so that demagogues discourse of constitutions ? 

Hear our Senator yet further. Do these tones resemble 
those of one who "went crawling back into a Senatorial 
caucus as a democrat,"^ or who ever crawls towards his ob- 
ject, be that object what it may ? Have craw^lers words like 
these ? — 

" For my own part, Mr. President, come what may, I intend to vote, 
speak, and act according to my own sense of duty so long as I hold a seat 
in this chamber. I have no defence of my Democracy. I have no pro- 
fessions to make of my fidelity. I have no vindication to make of my 
course. Let it speak for itself. The insinuation that I am acting with 
the Republicans or Americans has no terror, and will not drive me 
from my duty or propriety. It is an argument for which I have no 
respect. When I saw the Senator from Virginia acting with the Repub- 
licans on the Neutrality Laws, in support of the President, I did not feel 
it to be my duty to taunt him with voting with those to whom he hap- 

1 The allusion is to a recent speech of F. P. Stanton, Esq. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 103 

pened to be opposed in general politics. "When I saw the Senator from 
Georgia acting witli tlie Republicans on the Army Bill, it did not 
impair my confidence in his fidelity to principle. When I see Senators 
here every day acting with the Republicans on various questions, it 
only shows me that they have independence and self-respect enough to 
go according to their own convictions of duty, without being influenced 
by the course of others. 

" I have no professions to make upon any of these points. I intend to 
perform my duty in accordance with my own convictions. Neither the 
frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action, 
or drive me from my principles. I stand firmly, immovably upon 
those great principles of self-government and state sovereignty upon 
which the campaign was fought and the election won. I stand by the 
time-honored principles of the Democratic party, illustrated by Jeffer- 
son and Jackson — those principles of state rights, of state sovereignty, 
of strict construction, on which the great Democratic party has ever 
stood. I will stand by the Constitution of the United States, with all 
its compromises, and perform all my obligations under it. I will stand 
by the American Union as it exists under the Constitution. If, standing 
firmly by my principles, I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate 
that has no terrors for me. I prefer private life, preserving my own 
self-respect and manhood, to abject and servile submission to executive 
will. If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to execu- 
tive will, I am prepared to retire. OflScial position has no charms for 
me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes 
a gentleman and a Senator."' 

On the following twenty-ninth of April, Douglas thrilled the 
Senate with these sentences : 

" Mr. President, I say now, as I am about to take leave of 
this subject, that I never can consent to violate that great prin- 
ciple of State equality, of State sovereignty, of popular sover- 
eignty, by any discrimination, either in the one direction or in 
the other. My position is taken. I know not what its conse- 



104 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

quences will be personally to me. I will not inquire what 
those consequences may be. If I cannot remain in public life, 
holding firmly, immovably, to the great principle of self-gov- 
ernment and State equality, I shall go into private life, where 
I can preserve the respect of my own conscience under the 
conviction that I have done my duty and followed the principle 
wherever its logical consequences carried me." 

But no such dire result of duty followed, of conviction hon- 
ored, of true manliness exhibited in an exalted scene of action, 
was to make the history of Douglas a discouragement to pub- 
lic virtue. 

Having in the Senate, up to June, 1858, and since the in- 
troduction of the Kanzas bill, devoted a characteristic attention 
to British Aggression, and otherwise (as is so generally known 
that it need not be stated here), approved himself a democrat- 
ic legislator worthy of the name, the destiny of Douglas soon 
exposed him to a view, in which we plainly see his hold upon 
the people, and the people's hold on him. 

The reader knows that we approach the celebrated contest 
between Lincoln and our hero. 

The continued presence of Douglas in the Senate would de- 
pend on the Illinois elections of November, 1858. Douglas 
was opposed by Lincoln, the latter being substantially backed 
alike by the so-called Republican Party in Illinois and by the 
so-called Democratic President at Washington. The eloquent 
popular addresses made by Lincoln, and the eloquent unpopu- 
lar appeals made by the administration equally fell short of 
their design. There was " a Douglas to the rescue," and the 
victory belonged to real greatness, to the people, in a word, to 
democratic interests and principles. 



THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 105 

In four months, the " Little Giant " made one hundred and 
thirty speeches, all of them but three delivered in the most un- 
confined form of the popular assembly. Having no contempt- 
ible opponent, he was not perfunctorily ventilating his " great 
principle." His speeches could not well enhance his reputa- 
tion — yet they seemed to make new revelations of his 
strength. 

Although suspected of a secret understanding with Republi- 
cans, he boldly said in his first campaign speech : 

"I will be entirely frank with you. My object was to 
secure the right of the people of each State and of each Ter- 
ritory, North or South, to decide the question for themselves, 
to have slavery or not, just as they choose ; and my opposition 
to the Lecompton Constitution Avas not predicated upon the 
ground that it was a pro-slavery constitution (cheers), nor 
would my action have been different had it been a free-soil 

constitution I deny the right of Congress to force 

a slaveholding State upon an unwilling people. (Cheers.) 
I deny their right to force a free State upon an unwilling peo- 
ple. (Cheers.") 

These doctrines, and the cheers with which the democratic 
audience at Chicago heard them, mark the difference between 
the democratic tendencies of thought, and those by which the 
generally good citizens but seldom thorough political reasoners 
of the republican party are distinguished. Douglas and his 
democratic audience, whatever they might have chosen with 
reference to Kanzas and that moment, regarded the whole 
country and all time too much to sacrifice to Kanzas what be- 
longs to the Union, or to sacrifice to any present interest the 
permanent interest of constantly attested democratic principles. 



106 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

Indeed, the opposition to the democratic party, call it as you 
will, is like all precedent forms of opposition to that party : it 
conserves a part at the expense of the whole, the present at 
the expense of the future. 

Douglas and his hearers were not unwilling that the South 
should gain whatever territory could be gained by the fair con- 
servatism and the just observance of the principle, " which 
asserts the exclusive right of a free people to form and adopt 
their own fundamental law, and to manage and regulate their 
own internal affairs and domestic institutions." Lincoln and 
his hearers would have sacrificed that principle rather than an 
inch of territory or a moment of apparent triumph to their ad- 
versaries. 

Whoever reads with care the published speeches — they 
were not debates — of Stephen Arnold Douglas and of Abra- 
ham Lincoln will arise from fair examination of them, with 
such thoughts as these : Here are two men, of whom one is 
great and both are true as well as able. Lincoln represents, 
not greatly, but with marked ability, the least objectionable 
form of republicanism. Douglas represents, and greatly, the 
most patriotic form of democracy. Lincoln magnifies the in- 
terests of keeping territories now free in that condition, slight- 
ly estimating, or forgetting to preserve intact, the principle 
without which freedom in the territories or elsewhere would 
be a sheer impossibility. Douglas magnifying nothing, nor de- 
preciating aught, devotes himself to the elucidation and the 
preservation of the principle on which all real republican or 
democratic interests must always be dependent. 

It is curious (I may observe in passing) to remark, that Mr. 
Breckenridge and his supporters, though insisting on the inter- 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 107 

est of slavery, while Mr. Lincoln and his party call for anti- 
slavery legislation, imitate the latter in preferring present 
interests to permanent concerns, a present triumph to a lasting 
victory. 

Throughout the Illinois discussion, Douglas takes it for cer- 
tain, that the Dred Scott case has not precluded him from 
arguing in favor of his darling doctrine as to teri'itorial discre- 
tion. In the platform on which he so worthily appears as the 
chief representative of the only true rational and national 
democracy, it is treated as an open question whether, in the case 
alluded to, the Supreme Court has indicated the measure of 
restriction imposed by the Federal Constitution on the power 
of the Territorial Legislature over the subject of the domestic 
relations. Many of us think — for my part, I am clearly of 
opinion — that the dicta of that case will never be so trans- 
formed into the law of binding precedent as to become obliga- 
toiy on the courts and therefore on the loyal citizen. Before 
it can become so, judges, even in the highest places, will have 
learned the meaning of the Constitution as the people under- 
stand it. Not in the intemperate discussions of town meetings, 
not in reckless agitation, not in artificially produced interpre- 
tations by the people of the Constitution, will a judge attempt 
to find the meaning of that instrument. But the judge who 
ventures to despise the solemn reading, the deliberate construc- 
tion, of the Constitution by the people, ought to be impeached. 
His conscience will impeach him. For, although he may at 
last find warrant for adhering to his own construction, it must 
be quite evident to him, that his construction may be violative, 
not alone of the true significance inherent in a given constitu- 
tional provision, but of the sacred principle, that all the forms 



108 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

of law derive theii* political substance and legal vigor from the 
will of the people. Is it not important, therefore, that the 
facts alluded to in the initial sentences of this paragraph — to 
say nothing of a certain rather strict construction given by 
Judge Douglas to the dicta alluded to — have left our hex'o free 
to represent before the people, and the people free to appreci 
ate in his election or defeat, the interest of the " great principle," 
to which our hero now devotes his life ? If I have not mis- 
taken what is now impending, thought will be appealed to, and 
deliberation — warmed, it may be, by a patriotic fervor, but still 
serving reason and expressing judgment — may determine the 
approaching contest by this reading of the Constitution and 
this interpretation of the necessary tenets of American democ- 
racy : " That every distinct political community, loyal to the 
Constitution and the Union, is entitled to all the rights, privi- 
leges, and immunities of self-government in respect to its local 
concerns and internal polity, subject only to the Constitution 
of the United States." If so, no quibble as to the last clause 
of the preceding sentence^ will degrade the sanctuary of judi- 
cial action, nor will sectional suggestions penetrate the pres- 
ence of decision by the judges. There will be occasion to re- 
mark a restoration and a promise. Constitutional constructions 
long respected in the courts of justice will be restored. The 
action of the judges will reveal the promise of the Union to 
be permanent, and the promise of democracy to make a new 
manifestation of its fitness as a principle of government. 

Triumphing in the local contest, Douglas soon resumed his 
senatorial position. He again devoted all that in him was 
to the public service. He again displayed himself as quite 

- The words are those of Douglas. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 109 

unalterably attached, as a statesman, to the principles of the 
democratic party. Is not this sufficient eulogy, as well as suf- 
ficient indication, of the recent course of Douglas in the Sen- 
ate? 

Mr. F. P. Stanton thinks it is not. He objects that " Doug- 
las has not maintained his position to the end." He adds : 
" After the Democratic party had abandoned its principles, he 
ought not to have gone to Charleston at all. He should 
have hoisted the standard of true Democracy, and defied the 
Charleston Democracy ; and this, gentlemen, is what I, in my 
humble way, advised him to do. He thought different, and 
wished to purify the party. I told him that they would crush 
him, and they have done it. They decapitated him for the 
Chairman of the Committee on Territories, and Senator Green 
substituted in his place. I thought then he would take my ad- 
vice, but I was chagrined to find that he didn't meet this out- 
rage as I would have done. You saw that just after that act 
that Douglas went crawling back into a senatorial caucus as a 
Democrat — whereas he had only a little while before been 
kicked out for not being a Democrat." 

The chagrin alluded to by Mr. Stanton does not equal 
that which may be well predicted for him. After trying his 
philosophy as a republican, perhaps the lesson of the life of 
Douglas will be understood by Stanton. 

In the first place, all the difficulties of our present condition 
cannot hide the facts of histoxy so well presented recently by 
one with whom the writer has not always quite agreed, but in 
whom he always proudly recognizes genius and fidelity to prin- 
ciple. In a recent speech. Senator Pugh well reminds us that 
" the history of the democratic party is the history of the 



110 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

country. Whatever is great in the history of the country, 
either in war or peace, is due to that party. It is not infalli- 
ble, and like all things human, may sometimes fail ; but what- 
ever errors it has committed, have been corrected in good time. 
It is now the only organization capable of maintaining the in- 
tegrity and stability of the government." 

In the next place, Douglas, in the very action which has, 
perhaps, chagi'ined his quondam friend into a Lincolnite, at- 
tested his determination to restore whatever had been taken 
from the integi'ity of the democratic party. He could do it, 
but he could not do it in contempt of the principle that the 
means must be adapted to the end. He could not do it by a 
rash abandonment of his position in the democratic party, and 
the taking of position with the good men who, although they 
constitute the numbers, do not exercise the power, of the re- 
publican party. 

But I will not here further anticipate my view of Douglas 
as a candidate. I wish to bring to a conclusion my account of 
Douglas as a legislator. 

Faithful to principles which, at the outset, made him a Jack- 
sonian democrat, the whole career of Douglas has, excepting 
only the eclipse already witnessed, illustrated the completeness 
and the fitness of Jacksonian principles to govern wisely, to 
promote the real wealth, to secure the real glory, of such a 
people as the American Union binds together. In a sketch 
like that presented to the reader, no detail is possible. But 
by allusion, reference, or otherwise, I have presented to the 
reader almost all that I desire to say of Douglas as a Senator.^ 

3 The speech of May 15 and 16, 1860, will be referred to in our next division— in 
the view of Douglas as a Candidate. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. Ill 

It is not impertinent to our design to say a word in this 
connexion of our Senator as he appears in private life. 

Without attempting to attract, nay, rather (for here unim- 
portant I'easons) wishing to avoid, the special notice of our 
hero, the writer has encountered Douglas more than once in 
social conversation. What he has submitted as to pithy say- 
ings, forceful jests, strong answers, and strong silences,'^ is 
partly the result of a direct observation of the characteristics 
of Douglas. Meeting him at Cincinnati, eight years ago, and 
at Columbus twice since then, I so observed his " characters " 
as to imagine that I learned a little of his character. It is 
not of the Claude Loraine landscape, or the Raphael Madonna, 
order. Sunday-like, sunshiny geniality is not the indication 
of our hero's presence or his manner. The sesthetics also, to 
whom I have before referred as finding their beloved type in 
Breckinridge, would not discern in Douglas Breckinridge's 
courtly style. But for a natural, straightforward, goodly, 
though it be but mortal, fitness for encountering constituents, 
commend me to Judge Douglas. And for real geniality, and 
wholesome grace, and forceful dignity, commend me also to 
our " Little Giant." 

Forceful is a word of constantly suggested application to our 
hero. When I pointed to his forceful jests, I used no uncon- 
sidered phrase. It may sometimes appear that in the charac- 
ter of Douglas there is lack of that important element called 
humor. But there is a real, earnest, forceful humor in that 
character, of which the forceful jest is often the expression. 

Answers of great strength occasionally call for admiration 

* Ante, p. 44. 



112 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

in the social intercourse of Douglas. But forceful silences are 
yet more characteristic of that intercourse. 

Of that more inward life of Douglas, which reveals the 
charm of home,^ I am not able to inform the reader. But 
if all we read be true, the eclipse recorded by the writer must 
have been after all only partial. It was during that eclipse 
that Douglas formed his present conjugal relation — and all 
accounts of Mrs. Douglas celebrate her loveliness. 

5 Sena tor Douglas having lost the wife already mentioned, was Aarriod to his present 
wife. MiPS Adele Cutts, Nov. 20, 1856. 



THE CANDIDATE 



CHAPTER I. 

« THE CANDIDATE FOR FORENSIC OFFICE. 

Only two forensic offices have been held by Douglas — that 
of State's Attorney and that of Judge. 

To each of these offices, he was elected by the Legislature. 
But with reference to each, the popularity which Douglas 
from the very first of his experience in Illinois began to ac- 
quire, must be considered. So that we might in the present 
chapter take that suppletory view of Douglas as a candidate 
which is in order in the present division of this work. 

But I prefer to make the purposed further observation of 
the popularity of Douglas, in the chapters which relate to the 
Candidate for Legislative Office and the Candidate for the 
Presidency. 

I conclude this brief chapter, therefore, by the statement 
that we have no evidence of over-anxiety on the part of 
Douglas as a candidate for forensic office. On the contrary, 
the judgeship was not sought by him. 

(115) 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CANDIDATE FOR LEGISLATIVE OFFICE. 

"When Douglas left New England to become a Western 
man, the way was well opened to him, as we have already 
seen, to understand two imjoortant principles of the true 
American political system. 

One of these, as we have also seen, related to the very con- 
stitution of the people, to the population of this scene of the 
combination, modification, and development of national pecu- 
liarities. The other, we have also ascertained, relates to 
the political and social conflict and harmony of the varieties in 
religious faith. 

The first asserted it to have been, and to continue to be, the 
right of humanity itself— of man as man — to people this New 
World with tributes from the population of the Old World, and 
their derivatives. The second asserted the duty of govern- 
ment in this new scene of national development to establish 
social and political equality among the varieties of religious 
faith. 

It was understood by the democratic party of the time of 
Jefferson, and it was a part of the Jacksonian version or de- 
velopment of the Jeffersonian constitutional democracy, that 

(116) 



THE LIFE OF SLEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 117 

the native and adopted citizen, without distinction of religious 
faith, must equally participate in the right of suffrage and the 
right of being represented in the moulding of our laws and 
the administration of our public justice. 

Either in a distinctive manner of expressing the principles 
just recognized, or in a distinctive heartiness in their accept- 
ance, the followers of Jefferson and Jackson won the prefer- 
ence in general of citizens whose place of birth was transat- 
lantic. Those opposed to Jefferson and Jackson, consequently, 
grew unfriendly to the " foreign element." 

It followed that to be, as Douglas was, a Jacksonian demo- 
crat, was to find attached and loyal friends ; and these our hero 
found. 

From the first, indeed, all circumstances tended to attract to 
Douglas public confidence in Illinois. That walk to Winches- 
ter — a walk which certain recollections force the writer to re- 
gard with a peculiar interest — was a valuable introduction of 
our hero to the people among whom he was to live and to be 
a candidate. 

Arrived at Winchester,^ the service which our young ad- 
venturer to western possibilities of fame and fortune rendered 
to the auctioneer, variously prefigured our hero's subsequent 
cai'eer. 

The accuracy of his service, and its nameless indication of 
capacity for higher service, attracted such a notice to young 
Douglas as prefigured his selection for forensic ofiice, for Com- 
mittee duty in and out of legislative bodies, and the like. 

The conversation during intervals of the three days' employ- 
ment here referred to was the next prefiguration of the subse- 

1 Ante, p. 45. 



118 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

quent career of Douglas. It was chiefly political. The 
young Jacksonian^ knew the principles of that development 
of JeiFersonian democracy which dates from Jackson. What 
he knew of Jackson made him an enthusiast of principles, 
themselves attractive to a thorough thinker. He explained, 
defended, illustrated, advocated the Jacksonian democracy. 

His conversation, and the confidence in Douglas which re- 
sulted from it, plainly enough prefigure our hero at the bar 
and on the stump, in popular assemblies and in Senatorial 
debate. In its manner, as we may suppose the latter, it 
prefigures Douglas as an orator."^ 

And it is easy to discern another prefiguration of Douglas' 
subsequent career. Knowing what this history has shown of 
our candidate — Avhat some of us have learned of him in public 
or in private audience — what no fair-minded voter will deny 
to him — we have the right to add, that the strong sense and 
practical, reliable, as well as ample knowledge shown by the 
auctioneer's assistant, made him arbiter and judge as well as 
advocate. 

The whole effect, indeed, of these three days of accidental 
service, accidental conversation with the people, accidental ac- 
quirement of the germ of popularity, was another prefiguration 
of the subsequent career of Douglas. That effect deserves 
the name of a success. Our hero was befriended so generally 
and so promptly that his school of forty pupils, " started " in 
November, '33, enabled him in '34, to hang his shingle, and to 
enter regularly on the practice of the law. 

The fact, already mentioned, that our hero did not study the 
effect of dress, must not mislead us into the supposition that 

2 Ante, p. 34. 3 Ante, p. 44. See also page 60. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 119 

he was inaccurate or unreliable in drawing papers for his 
clients, pleadings for the record, or the like. The history of 
special pleaders quite forbids this supposition, as all lawyers 
know. To mention but two instances, very different, indeed, 
we may name the English Chief Justice Saunders (pah! 
there is a stench in his mere memory !) and our Chief Justice 
Parsons. These and other well known instances being con- 
sidered in connexion with the indications furnished by the 
volumes of reports already mentioned, we may easily account 
for the early selection of Douglas as the candidate of the 
democratic party for representative in the Legistature of 
Illinois. 

He had served, the reader will remember, as State's 
Attorney. 

To these suggestions, we must add that of the popularity 
acquired by Douglas, by drawing and presenting the resolu- 
tions at a Jackson meeting, and by his victory over a politi- 
cian, "name of" Lamborn. Douglas' triumph caused him to 
be crowed over as a "High-Combed Cock," as well as a 
" Little Giant " on that memorable occasion."* 

"What was the peculiar style of speaking by which Douglas 
won his first distinction as a stumper, we can only guess. 

It is quite probable that he was then as now distinguished 
by the use of language easily intelligible to all hearers. Mr. 
Milburn, more than twenty years ago, remarked our candi- 
date's "first-hand knowledge of the people" — his acquaintance 
with the popular ideas, and his familiarity with the language 
of the people in expressing these ideas.^ 

Lately, it has been objected that our candidate is too monot- 

* Sheahan's Life, 19. s Ante, p. 60. 



120 THE LIFE OP STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

onous — that lie manifests in his speaking not the least appre- 
ciation of the mountains, plains, and valleys, seas, and lakes 
and rivers, trees, and shrubs, and flowers, in which other 
orators find illustrations and conceits. 

Monotony is hardly to be found in Douglas' speeches. He, 
indeed, repeats, reiterates, insists upon the principle which he 
deems fundamental, and which is so, in our political system. 
Here he manifests, not ignorance, but knowledge, of his per- 
sonal interests and the interests of that which he considers as 
his cause. 

But space will not allow the writer to discuss the question 
whether Douglas is an orator. Opponents always find him 
one, wherever and whenever they oppose him. 

The faith of Douglas in the principle (which might now be 
defined as an article of the democratic creed)^ — " that every 
distinct political community, loyal to the Constitution and the 
Union, is entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities 
of self-government in respect to its local concerns and internal 
polity, subject only to the Constitution of the United States," 
was not well defined at the time when he was first a candidate 
for legislative ofiice. Perhaps, I ought to say, that at that 
time, neither Douglas nor any other person saw the applica- 
bility of this principle to territorial communities. For, after 
all, the principle, simply stated as we have just employed the 
words of Douglas to express it, would always have command- 
ed the assent of democratic minds. The trouble was, we had 
not learned that a territorial community must necessarily be a 
" distinct political community " — a people, which, " if loyal to 
the Constitution and the Union," should be regarded as having 

6 Ante, p 116 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 121 

the interest and the capacity'^ which constitute the right of 
self-government. 

But while our candidate had not yet seen the entire appli- 
cability of his principle, in common with all democrats of the 
Jacksonian school, he beheved its substance, and it was to him 
as a political religion. 

This it was that made him so often and so soon a successful 
candidate for the trust and dignity of legislative office. For 
whoever doubts the principle of popular discretion, popular 
self-government, the people do not doubt it. 

Douglas may not be well read in what they call political 
economy. What statesman ever learned to legislate from be- 
ing well read in that branch of "science?" But Douglas is 
well read in that instructive book, the people. Understanding 
what he reads in that direction, he has easily acquired his 
great distinction as a statesman. Having found the key to the 
difficulties of political economy,^ he has opened them in pres- 
ence of the people, and the people have confided in their rep- 
resentative. 

'Ante, p. 93. 8Ante, p. 78. 



CHAPTER m. 

THE CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 

Op the Presidential candidate in 1852 and in 1856, I have 
already intimated all that I desire to say. 

I hasten to a view of Douglas, in which he appears before 
us as a present candidate for the Supreme Political Distinction 
in America. 

He so appears as repesenting a recent expression of the 
principles maintained by the deliberate convictions of the 
people. 

This expression asserts, among other things, as Douglas 
constantly asserts, the principle now known as Popular Sov- 
ereignty. In Douglas, then, we find the representative of a 
great truth or a great fallacy. 

I have attempted to establish that our candidate is not de- 
voted to a fallacy. Since what I wrote, with that design, was 
printed, I have read an article by Mr. Brownson,^ which en- 
deavors to establish that the tenet of Popular Sovereignty as 
held by Douglas and his party tends to fihbusterism, to the 
election of judges by the people and the consequent destruction 

1 Art. " Politias at Home," Brownson's Review, July, 1860. 
(122) 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 123 

of judicial freedom, purity and dignity, as well as to other 
mobocratic evils. 

It is worthy of remark, that if this objection be well taken, 
our whole system lacks foundation, or in other words, is based 
upon a fallacy. If the exercise of the right of self-govern- 
ment tends to the election of judges by the people, and if the 
election of judges by the people tends to judicial constraint, 
corruption, degradation, let us give up the suicidal right of 
self-government at once. If the exercise of the same right 
tends to filibusterisra, and filibusterism tends to international 
as weir as domestic anarchy, let us at once reform the con- 
stitution.2 

Fair comparison, however, of the conservatism with which a 
constitutional democracy associates its tendency to progress 
and experiment, will show it to be more reliable than that 
which anti-democratic principles would furnish as the safeguard 
of our liberties. Whoever, after due reflection, holds that this 
opinion is a fallacy, must also hold that our whole govern- 
mental system is a fallacy. 

There is, undoubtedly, a difficulty to be encountered in the 
maintenance of the "great principle" of Mr. Douglas. But 
it is not that which we have just encountered. 

The extremists of the South may tell us: Douglas does not 
think, and those among his followers who are non-slaveholders 
do not think, that slavery is a blessing — that the constitution 

" It is also worthy of remark in passing, that the learned and able reviewer has 
himself assailed, not only the mere dicta, but the binding, precedental point of the 
decision in the Dred Scott case. Now, unfortunately for his argument, this most 
unhappy of all infelicitous decisions, this most political of all political decisions, was 
not made by judges elected by the people, but by judges appointed, and to hold their 
offices while they shall well behave ! 



124 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

carries property in man like property in horses into all the 
territories of the Union — and we cannot trust a man who fails 
in these particulars. And the extremists of the North may 
tell us : Douglas will not shriek with us against the crying sin, 
and desolating curse, and unutterable abomination, of man- 
holding. 

How Douglas must encounter such a difficulty as this, we 
have already partly seen. 

To each of the objectors, however, he might, and probably 
he would, thus answer : I regard slavery as all men of sense 
before long will once more regard it. Looking on it a5 it is a 
Kentucky, a Virginia, or a Mississipjii legal institution, I have 
really little to say or think about it. If I think of it at all as 
such an institution of a sovereign State, I do not find that it 
has added to the number of slaves in the world, and I do find 
that it has mitigated the rigor of enslavement to those who 
were already slaves. Not being a citizen of a slave State, it 
has not been my duty to study, as it ought to be studied if at 
all, the question how, and when, or whether at any time, the 
interest of master and slave, or the real interest of either, may 
require the legal dissolution of the relation involved in slavery. 
As for the slavery question as it may arise in territories, you 
have learned my views. If the Constitution, as finally inter- 
preted by the Supreme Court, do not forbid the people of the 
territories to govern themselves in reference to slavery, the 
extension or non-extension of slavery in the territories shall 
be determined, not by Presidents or Congresses, but by the 
communities, the peoples, chiefly and directly interested in the 
subject-matter. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 125 

But, it may be asked, if Douglas were a territorian, how 
would he vote respecting slavery? 

I do not know. But, voter! let us try to guess. 

I guess, then, that before deciding, Douglas as a territorian 
would try to understand. He would examine the opinions of 
Calhoun — a great good man — in favor of the Christianity, in 
other words of the humaneness, of slavery in America. He 
would examine the opinions of that Alexander Stephens, whose 
opinions have been glanced at in this volume, and of others, 
South, and the opinions of a Cor win and a Thayer, North. 
And, finally, before deciding he would study latitude and 
longitude, and pay a due attention to those mountains, valleys, 
and plains, those seas, and lakes, and rivers, and those trees, and 
shrubs, and flowers, which it has been said his oratory fails to 
notice and to illustrate. How after all, he would decide, it may 
be difficult even to guess. But if he thinks, as I believe he does, 
that slavery, although it may be unobjectionable where it is, 
w^ould generally be objectionable in a territory free from it at 
present, how he would determine generally needs no indication. 

These, the reader will observe, are my conjectures, not the 
words of Douglas. I have not been authorized by Douglas 
to write a single line of this volume — not a line of it has been 
submitted to him — not a line of it must charge any one but 
the writer himself. 

If an inordinate ambition cannot be shown in Douglas — ^it 
is charged against him — we may well conclude, that our can- 
didate is well worthy of the high position lately given to him 
by the action of his party. 

No inordinate ambition touched the lips of Douglas as with 
a supernal fire when he defeated the Lecompton Constitution. 



126 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

No inordinate ambition sliowed itself in Douglas when he said : 
" I prefer the position of Senator, or even that of a private 
citizen, where I would be at liberty to defend and maintain the 
well defined principles of the democratic party, to accepting a 
presidential nomination uj^on a platform incompatible with the 
princple of self-government in the territories, or the reserved 
rights of the States, or the perpetuity of the Union under the 
Constitution."''' 

No, there is no inordinate ambition in the man who utters 
language such as this — and proves by conduct that he means 
precisely what his language signifies. 

What, then, are we to pronounce respecting Douglas ? 

Clearly stating, boldly uttering, reiterating in all presences, 
the doctrine, that the people may be trusted with all political 
questions; fully, nobly, gloriously redeemed, if ever he has 
eri'ed as we believe; the ablest and the most distinguished 
living statesman, true to our American system in its integrity ; 
our Candidate seems well entitled to the Presidency. 

The aesthetics under Breckenridge may not admire him. 
The believers in extreme opinions. North and South, may 
anxiously endeavor to defeat the people's real choice. They 
may succeed. The people may be kept from seeing Douglas 
as he is. But they who know him, even if they do not think 
him faultless, find in him a thorough fitness for the Presidency 
which they think cannot fairly be attributed to any other can- 
didate. 

Here I must bring to a conclusion this imperfect, but I trust 
impartial Version of the Life and Character of Douglas. 

In addition to the views of our Candidate in the Senate, 

" See also the quotation on page 102. 



THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 127 

which we have already taken, I would like to give an outline 
of the speech of last May. In this speech Douglas vindicates 
his record, shows the national and rational character of his 
democracy, proves that he deserves to be accepted at whatever 
cost of self-correction in the North, the South, the East, the 
"West, throughout the Union. But I must refer the reader to 
the speech itself — I have not space to give its outline. 

Before concluding, I would also gladly follow Douglas 
through his European travel, observation, conversation, pre- 
sentation and failure to be presented. But I must only thus 
glance at the Old World observation and experience of our Can- 
didate. 

Yet a word or two, and I will leave my hero to that " desti- 
ny," of which he speaks so often. 

From the very nature of this undertaking, there could be 
but little novelty irt its account of Douglas as a private indi- 
vidual. No intimacy on the part of the writer with Douglas 
has supplied the former with rich or various materials for this 
production. But the people have but little now to learn, of that 
which they have properly a right to know, of Stephen Arnold 
Douglas. For, the " Little Giant " has been so abused in body 
and in mind — with reference to his peculiar stretch of legs as 
well as his pecuhar reach of understanding — in his habits of 
the body and in his habits of the mind — that the absurd at- 
tempts of foolish enemies to injure him have served him well 
before the people. In the very desperation of these pitiful at- 
tacks, there is a plain confession of the strength of Douglas. 
And assaults of this description only serve to make the people 
more attentively observe the marked peculiarities of the well 
designated " Little Giant." On the other hand, the nickname 



128 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

just applied to Douglas has for years attested the familiar 
and affectionate regard with Avhich the masses early learned to 
look upon " the Senator from Illinois." And this regard itself 
was due to traits of character in our hero which no manufac- 
tured reputation, and no artificial greatness, ever equaled in 
attracting the affection of the people. 

Here submitting my production to the reader's judgment 
and his conscience, what shall I anticipate of its reception by 
the public ? Nothing. All I know with certainty about it is, 
that it has been designed for usefulness. Whether it shall be 
confined in its reception to a narrow circle of unfavorable critics, 
or shall at the best be circulated in a little sphere of friendly 
toleration, or, commended by its dedication to the truth, shall 
bear a message of good will to distant latitudes, it were vain to 
speculate. I leave this little volume to that Providence which 
often makes the most ambitious efforts agents of humiliation, 
and which sometimes seems to work the greatest good with the 
least considerable instruments. 



V 



INDEX. 



Advocate, Douglas the, ii to 55. 

Esthetics, the, under Breckinridge, 48, 12G. 

Americanism, distinctive, of Douglas, 101, 75, 78, C2, 63, 66, 80, 88 to 

91, 104, 117, 13, 21, 34, 36, 38, 55. 
Antecedents of Douglas, 19 to 22. 
Anti-Lecompton speeches, 101, 103, 105. 
Anti-Know Nothingism. See Americanism. 
Authority, respect for in the law, 63, 107, 125. 

Birthplace, 22, 23. 

Brandon and its neighborhood, 23 to 28. 

Breckinridge, Mr., 47, 106, 126. 

British Aggression, opposition to, 89, 104. 

Brownson, Mr., erroneous views of, 122. See 59, 93, 109, 116. 

Cabinet-Making, 30 to 32. 

Candidate, the, 115 to 128. 

Character of Douglas, 111, 127, 4, 13, 15, 25 to 29, 33, 36, 43 to 45, 47, 

53, 56, 60, 61, 62, 69, 73, 77, 92, 106. 
Citizenship, Douglas view of,i 75, 76, 116. 
Clay and Douglas, 96. 
Common Law, view of, 63. 
Compromise Measures of 1850, 96. 
Cuba, 81, 87. 

1 In the text, I omitted to refer to the bold and manly speeches of Mr. Douglas, 
against Know Nothingism — in favor of true and against false Americanism. 

9 (,129) 



130 



Demagogue — is Douglas a? — 75, 62, 125. 

Democracy, Jacksonian, 59, 109, 110, 116, 122, 46. 

Divorce, legislative, 59. 

Douglas. See especially. Antecedents, Birth-place, Cabinet-Making, 

Character, Democracy, Emigrant, Farm-life, Lawyer, Legislator, 

Judge, Oratory, Religious Interest, Student. 

Eclipse, of Douglas, the, 11, 96, 99. 

Emigrant, the, 36. 

Emigration Western (see population), 36. 

Farm-life, 22, 29. 

Foreign Policy, 79 to 82, 89. 

niinois, 35, 37, 39 to 42, 57, 75, 117. 
Improvements. See Internal Improvements. 
Internal Improvements, 57, 78, 91. 

Jackson, Andrew, 59, 79. 

Jackson, speech of Douglas, 79. 

Jacksonian Democracy. See Democracy, Jacksonian. 

Jeffersonian " " " *' 

Judge, Douglas as, 56 to 69. 

Kanzas, 10, 96, 99, 100. 

Lawyer, the. See titles Advocate and Judge. 

Legislator, 73 to 112. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 106, 36, 37, 58, 104. 

Mexican "War Speech, 82. 
Naturalization. See Citizenship. 

Oratory, 119, 78. 
Oregon, 79. 

Personal Characteristics, 111, 127. 

Policy. See Foreign Policy. 

Popular Sovereignty, 93, 106, 108, 120, 122, 124, 36. 

Pugh, Senator, tribute to, 109. 



INDEX. 131 

Religious interest, the. See Citizenship. 
Religious views of Douglas, 77. 

Rationality and Nationality of the Democracy of Douglas. See Democ- 
■racy and Slavery. 

Slavery, views of Douglas, 105, 124, 125, 97, 9S, 81. 
Stanton, Mr., his objections to Douglas, 109. 
Steamboat-life, Western, 38. 
Student, Douglas, the, 31, 32. 

Territories (see Popular Sovereignty), 86. 
Texas. See Annexation. 

Walk to Winchester, the, 42, 43, 117. 
War Speech of Douglas, 82. 
Western Emigration, 36. 
Wilmot Proviso, 83. 



